February 2024 – Your Financial Pharmacist

YFP 348: 2024 Housing Market Trends & Assumable Rate Mortgages

Posted on February 29, 2024February 29, 2024 by YFP Media

Tony Umholtz of First Horizon shares insights on the real estate landscape for 2024. Sponsored by First Horizon.

Episode Summary

In this week’s podcast sponsored by First Horizon, we’re joined by Tony Umholtz, a Mortgage Loan Officer from First Horizon, to delve into the housing market updates and trends for 2024. He shares insights on current rates, supply/demand dynamics, and the impact of projected Fed Rate cuts in 2024 on the market. The episode explores the pros and cons of buying a home now versus waiting and delves into assumable rate mortgages—what they are, how they function, eligible loan types, and their growing popularity.

About Today’s Guest

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

Key Points from the Episode

Housing market trends in 2024, including interest rates and supply/demand. [0:00]
Housing market trends and mortgage rates. [2:37]
Home insurance costs and roof age impacting mortgage approval. [5:29]
Housing market trends and financial planning for a growing family. [11:14]
Refinancing and assumable rate mortgages. [17:11]
Pharmacist home loan options with 700 credit score minimum. [23:26]

Episode Highlights

“One of the positives are again, these are, you know, inventory levels, on average or higher in most markets. So every markets different we’ve talked about that in the past, some markets are, you can’t generalize across the country. But on average inventory levels are better in most areas. And typically around this time of year, you build a little bit more inventory.” – Tony Umholtz

“I mean, what we saw in ’21, ’22 ’20, as well, that was unhealthy. It was great to see your house price go way up, and you make made money on equity. But it was unsustainable. Having 2023 was a blessing. Yeah, I mean, look at it that way. I mean, that was unsustainable. And this was a blessing for all of us, because it would have created a bubble in my mind. And we stopped it. And the fed helped to stop that. And I think that was a win.” – Tony Umholtz

Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode

Episode Transcript

Tim Ulbrich 00:00

Hey everybody, Tim Ulbrich here and thank you for listening to the YFP Podcast where each week we strive to inspire and encourage you on your path towards achieving financial freedom. This week I welcome First Horizon Mortgage Loan Officer Tony Umholtz back onto the show. During the show we discuss housing market updates and trends for the first quarter of 2024, including current rates supply and demand and how the projected fed rate cuts for 2024 impacting the market. We also discussed the pros and cons of buying now versus waiting and all things assumable rate mortgages. What they are, how they work, eligible loan types and why they are growing in popularity. Alright, let’s hear from today’s sponsor First Horizon and then we’ll jump in my interview with Tony Umholtz.

Tim Ulbrich 00:45

Does saving 20% for a down payment on a home feels like an uphill battle. It’s no secret that pharmacists have a lot of competing financial priorities including high student loan debt, meaning that saving 20% for a down payment on a home may take years. For several years now we’ve been partnering with First Horizon who offers a professional home loan option AKA a doctor or pharmacist loan that requires a 3% down payment for a single family home or townhome for first time homebuyers, has no PMI and offers a 30-year fixed rate mortgage on home loans up to $766,550 in most areas. The pharmacist home loan is available in all states except Alaska and Hawaii, and can be used to purchase condos as well. However, rates may be higher and a condo review has to be completed. To check out the requirements for First Horizon’s pharmacist home loan and to start the pre-approval process, visit yourfinancialpharmacist.com/home-loan. Again, that’s yourfinancialpharmacist.com/home-loan.

Tim Ulbrich 01:50

Tony, welcome back to the show.

Tony Umholtz 01:51

Tim, it’s good to be here with you.

Tim Ulbrich 01:53

We’re excited to have you back. As always we look to you to get our most up-to-date information on kind of what we’re seeing in the housing market, especially for those in 2024 that are looking to buy or sell. I know we’ve got a lot of first time homebuyers out there in our community that have been anxiously awaiting for the right right time to buy. And we’ve got people that have been in their home for a while, maybe in a starter home that are looking to sell and to move to elsewhere. And just a crazy market that I think is hindered a lot of the movement out there of people buying and selling. So why don’t we start there, Tony, of some of what you’re seeing here early in the first quarter of 2024 as it relates to the housing market, you know. What’s what’s going on with interest rates? What are you seeing out there with supply and demand?

Tony Umholtz 02:37

Well, all good questions, Tim. And as always great to be here with you. I you know, it’s been an interesting year, as we haven’t been into 2024 very long, but a lot has happened. And you know it, we kind of forecasted that this year would be a little better than 2023 as far as you know, mortgage volume and purchase volume. But we knew it was gonna be a tough year, we’re still coming out of this, this higher inflationary environment. There’s been some headwinds. But overall, there’s a lot of good things we’re seeing. And then there’s some not so good things. So I’ll start with one of the positives. One of the positives are again, these are, you know, inventory levels, on average or higher in most markets. So every markets different we’ve talked about that in the past, some markets are, you can’t generalize across the country. But on average inventory levels are better in most areas. And typically around this time of year, you build a little bit more inventory. But in a lot of places we haven’t had this amount of inventory since the 2019 are right before the pandemic, which is nice for buyers, right, because you’re finally getting an ability to find some some product and to negotiate a little bit. That being said, we’re still not in a normal market, we’re still under a normal market. Most markets are in that four month range of inventory. And an average markets probably five to seven months right inventory. So we’re still in a fairly tight environment for housing. And we’re still a bit under built nationally, meaning that we don’t have enough housing units. So that’s also you know, one of the reasons housing prices haven’t fallen, you know, despite the higher rates and the headwinds in the economy. Regarding rates, we have seen rates rise since the beginning of the year, and the rates were higher in October, early November than they are now. But we’ve seen an increase in a lot of that is due to positive economic data. Economic data has been positive on the you know, on the spending front, unemployment has been good, inflation is still there. I will say this to the last inflation report had had inflation but it was counting some inflation from last year. So like if you look past that we’re really going in the right direction. So I think the I think rates are gonna go down as time goes on. I think it’d be very slow this year. But you know, post the election, I think things can be pretty good. So I mean, it’s a roughly a year away, but I think you’re gonna see rates really get better as time goes on. But the other issue too coming back to this, you know, supply and demand we have as a mortgage company, we have so many clients we’ve pre-approved that are looking. It’s just gonna be, and I’m just one of many, but you know that it’s just going to get more competitive as those rates drop. So it’s like a kind of like a double edged sword, I think, you know.

Tim Ulbrich 03:32

Yeah, and I know we see that, Tony in our community. You know, a lot of first time homebuyers that’s it’s natural, right. As a new graduate, you finish pharmacy school, you’re looking at that home purchase. A lot of people are getting antsy on the renting front, “Hey, I’ve been renting for a while not not as long as I wanted.” They’re looking at what they’re paying for rent “Hey, I’d love to own a home, we’d love to build some equity long term.” And so certainly some pent up demand I know we see in our community. And I think that’s natural and expected to hear it broader than that, too. And I want our listeners to kind of hold that thought on, hey, if interest rates do come down, you know, here in 2024, what is the impact that that might have on the availability of the market? Because we’re going to talk a little bit about, you know, this concept of buy now versus wait, and what are some of the pros and cons. But before we do that, Tony, you shared something with me, before we hit record that I thought was of interest, would be of interest to our listeners, about what you’re seeing out there related to the age of a roof and how that might impact being able to get an insurance policy, which of course, you know, for homebuyers is a really important piece. So tell tell us more about what you’re seeing there?

Tony Umholtz 06:36

Sure. I mean, in the insurance aspect, it’s really big. And I think certain states are going to be tougher than others. So you’ve got, I’m based in Florida. So we’re ground zero for this, right? Because we’ve had, we had some legislation here in Florida that made, there were some abuses in you know, really more against the insurance industry, by various groups, and so forth. And people really has taken advantage of some of the flexibility. And it caused some challenges here. And there’s been some changes, as always, insurance companies are going to change what they insure, and one’s been roof age, right. So roof age is a big deal down here. It’s also in other states, too. So it’s not something that’s just here. And, you know, the costs of insurance have gone up a lot, right, and especially in more hurricane prone areas, or fire prone areas in the West, you’ve seen cost of insurance go up and I’ve seen like newer properties, you know, while they’re more expensive, the cost of insurance is much lower, you know, on newer construction, but it is more expensive generally to buy new construction. I would say the the age of the roof can vary a lot but and type of roof, whether it’s shingle or tile. So a tile roof typically has a longer age of life than a shingle roof. And the you know, though, sometimes we’ll cover those longer, but some insurance companies won’t touch it under 10 years, if it’s under, it’s got to be under 10 years, some are 15 years, some will go longer with what’s called a four point inspection, which not only looks at the roof, but looks at your, you know, your electrical, as well, looks at your plumbing, and other aspects of the home. But those are some things you may need to do. And it can become harder to get insurance or get the insurance that makes sense for you as far as costs go and coverage go. But it’s definitely an issue right now. And then, you know, with repairing a roof, it’s a lot of times it has to be done prior to closing. It’s not something you can essentially escrow. Right? You know, so, you know, if you’re selling a home and you have an older roof, repairing the roof is gonna help you get a much better deal on the house as far as the seller goes.

Tim Ulbrich 08:51

I’m glad you said that. That’s exactly where my mind was going. Right? If people are thinking about selling a home, this has an impact. If people are thinking about buying a home, it has an impact. And obviously every area of the country is different in terms of the risk and the exposure here. But it’s just another good reminder when you talk about rising insurance costs that you know, especially for that first time homebuyer, it’s very easy to fixate on purchase price of the home, right. Purchase price of the home. And we want to be thinking about the whole financial picture. So yes, it’s the purchase price of the home. It’s the mortgage that we’re going to carry the principal and interest but it’s also the taxes. It’s also the insurance, it’s also the upkeep, you know, and all those things involved. So here we’re talking about an older roof and being able to get an insurance policy if you do those insurance costs potentially going up. On top of that would be obviously that potential replacement costs to be thinking about of the roof, as well.

Tony Umholtz 09:38

That’s right. I have one little trick and secret. This is something we’ve we’ve done for 20 plus years and it doesn’t have a bearing on anything with mortgage. But sometimes clients will say, “hey, I need to get this insurance down.” And you have to have an you have to have a certain amount of coverage to get a mortgage right. So, but one thing you don’t need is, I’ll see these policies come in with $600,000 worth of personal property coverage. Yeah, well, as a lender, we don’t care about personal property. Now I recommend if you got valuables you have some coverage, right. But a lot of folks, especially buying a first home don’t have $600,000 worth of artwork and other collectibles to insure. So a lot of times taking that down, we’ll give you some premium savings. And we’ve done that quite often, over the years or suggested that.

Tim Ulbrich 10:25

Good reminder, right, to kind of look at line item of your insurance policy and what you do or don’t need, especially if you’re looking at if you options. Tony, as an aside, but related to that I we had a unfortunate fire in our neighborhood of a home, just down the street. And ever since then, we’re now a year and several months out where there’s been no movement on the house. And I presume it’s related to something being tied up in insurance. I don’t know the full backstory. But ever since then I have looked differently at my replacement cost line item, as well as the relocation piece of, you know. When you think about how long might this go on? And what are the expenses associated for relocation. So good reminder to look and understand your homeowners insurance policy.

Tony Umholtz 11:08

Absolutely.

Tim Ulbrich 11:10

Tony, I want to get your opinion on buy now versus wait. Obviously, we’re talking broadly, this, of course, is specific to one situation. But what made me think about this is I had a conversation with a colleague a couple of weeks ago, this individual is about seven years into their career, dual income household, young family just had their second child bought their first starter home about three years ago. And they’re now itching to move, right. Family has grown. They want to get a better location a little bit closer to commute to work. But naturally, as a part of that they’re facing some headwinds, those headwinds are obviously the market that we’re in. Interest rates are higher. Home costs have appreciated, of course, and in this case, they’re moving to an area that the homes are just more expensive altogether. And so when I was asking some questions, you know, what I heard, and what made me think that this is probably resonate with a lot of our community is that there’s several barriers that they’re facing. Yes, the current market conditions, but also, hey, we’ve got these student loan payments that are still hanging around, right. We’ve got daycare costs, which are rising, you know, quickly, especially now that they have a second child. And they really feel like they need to be saving more aggressively for retirement, they feel like they’re behind on retirement. And I think this is a great example of someone that I will talk to, on a regular basis that’s in this new practitioner phase of their career that feels like they’re not on track with their other financial goals, and is feeling somewhat trapped by this home situation that they’re in. And, you know, if we were to consider a move, potentially, knowing what’s going on in the market, knowing where interest rates are at, you know, potentially do we buy now, when rates are not at the highest, as you mentioned, but they’re quite high and hope we can refinance in the future? Or, do we wait and see what happens with interest rates come down with at that point, running the risk that, hey, as rates come down, I think it’s safe to assume we’re gonna have a lot more, you know, sellers are gonna have a lot more buyers that flood the market. So just would love to hear your thoughts, you know, knowing that this is a common situation we probably would hear and see in our community.

Tony Umholtz 13:10

Sure. I mean, it’s a great question. And it’s very common across the country right now. We’re seeing some of our clients, you know, growing families outgrowing their home or have to relocate because of employment situation. Very common. So I would say I mean, like we take a step back, we kind of touched on at the beginning of our discussion here is, if you look at the overall market, we’ve got lower than average inventory in most areas still, even though inventories building which inventory buildings a good thing, because we need it going into the spring season. But the you’re likely going to see pretty stable housing prices, right? Probably escalating like even if you look year over year, prices went up over last year. I mean, certain pockets fell. There’s certain areas that you know, fell. I think, but but on average home prices actually went up last year. Even with all those headwinds, right. So I think you’re getting into a pretty stable investment, as well, you know, if you if you’re moving up, like in a situation with the colleagues you spoke to, I mean, moving to a better part of town, a bigger home. I mean, all these things could be meaning more appreciation on the house, too. So yes, the cost is more, but there is the upside of appreciation. I do think we are going to all see, like anyone that bought in the last year, year to year and a half, almost two years now. They’re going to get opportunities to refinance in the future. I can’t tell you exactly when. But we’ve even seen some that are popping up that made sense. Now after these last few weeks of rates rising. We had a few clients and some of them had to pay their loan for six months just because that’s a guideline for the type of program they were in. And we couldn’t refinance them, but they the rates have dropped over a point they could have refinanced already. There’s people that have already refinanced. So I think I think you’re gonna see opportunities for that as time goes on, where your cost of ownership will actually come down. But it is tough right now, it’s very tough. There are less buyers buying. So I think you’re gonna be able to negotiate better with sellers, which is the is the benefit. But it’s a tough decision. I mean, this is where you look at the whole financial plan. Yeah, right, you’ve got to look at, okay, I’ve got daycare costs rising, I want to save more for retirement. You know, that brings me to, like, you know, making sure you’re utilizing all your company matches, right. And all the things you can do if that other buckets going up for housing, you know, and in there is no question, housing prices have trended higher, and, you know, they may, what would be healthy and really, I’ll take a step back here. I mean, what we saw in ’21, ’22 ’20, as well, that was unhealthy. It was great to see your house price go way up, and you make made money on equity. But it was unsustainable. Having 2023 was a blessing. Yeah, I mean, look at it that way. I mean, that was unsustainable. And this was a blessing for all of us, because it would have created a bubble in my mind. And we stopped it. And the fed helped to stop that. And I think that was a win. It made my business a lot harder. I don’t mean a lot of people. But it was one of those things where it was it was a blessing for this industry, I think and the housing market in general. So you know, just again, to clarify, I think you you are going to see a fairly flat market, I feel like this year, I do think you’re going to see a lot people stepping in, I will also mention that builders are opportunistic. And the builders know, there’s an opportunity right now, because we’re under built, we didn’t build enough homes from 2010 to 2020. So they’re going to be building. We’ll get to equilibrium, eventually, in the next few years. And I think things will be a little different then, but I don’t think prices are going to collapse in most markets, you know. And I think there’s been a bit of a pullback in certain areas. But for the bread and butter communities where most people are owner occupied, you’re not going to see a lot of variance.

Tim Ulbrich 17:11

Great perspective, Tony. And I think what really resonated with me with this conversation that I had is, you know, yes, there’s the objective math part right of buying a home, and we want to make sure that it fits in with the rest of the financial plan. But it also, there’s an emotional part of this that is important, you know, for I know firsthand for us, our home is we spend most of our time in our home. It’s it’s a place where we’re making memories and experiences. And so there’s this tug and pull that I see with a lot of pharmacists, which is a healthy kind of balance that we’ve got to strike of, hey, how do we have a reasonable percentage of our income going towards our home so that we can achieve other financial goals, right, we don’t want to be house poor. But also we recognize that, you know, part of living a rich life today is potentially the home and what we’re going to be able to build in that community and our experiences and so forth. And this is the tug and pull, right that we’ve got to think about. I do have one question and I’m hesitating even ask this because I have a feeling the answer is it depends. But when you mentioned the the example of a 1% reduction and refinance, and you know, in that example, they hadn’t yet got to that six month timeline that you mentioned with that loan product. Is there a general rule of thumb that you think about in terms of rate differential and where someone starts to begin to think that a refinance, of course, when you consider costs involved in doing that may be advantageous? Is it at that point? Is it less is a little bit more? Or is it just too much of it depends?

Tony Umholtz 18:37

Well, I don’t want to say it depends, but there’s a lot of variables, and one of them is clearly is the loan size. Right? Which is, I mean, it might 21 plus years doing this in this business, I mean, generally said 1%, but I’ve had numerous, especially when we do what’s called premium pricing, which means we as a lender pay the closing costs, which is a way to do that. Now, you don’t get the same rate that you would if you paid the customary costs, right. But like I’ve had larger loans, where we’ve done it at as little as 50 basis points, which is a half point. But if you have a million dollar loan, and there’s no closing costs, and you’re saving interest, you’re going to do it. So we’ve we’ve had all kinds of scenarios, but generally I look for 1% and that tend to people on the loan size and the state, certain states have higher closing costs than other states you know, so that would be the two variables.

Tim Ulbrich 19:31

Yeah, reason I asked I think to your point is we’re gonna see this come up, and maybe we’ll have to do another episode later this year if we start to see things trending because we haven’t talked about it right much in the last couple years for good reason.

Tony Umholtz 19:42

I wouldn’t be surprised if we get into the third quarter and closer to the election, we start seeing some movement. So we’ll just watch it.

Tim Ulbrich 19:50

The next thing I wanted to pick your brain on was around assumable rate mortgages. So I read an article on Wall Street Journal a couple weeks ago that really just piqued my interest about this topic and I know one we haven’t talked about on the show before, and obviously in the current rate environment that we’re in, I have a feeling some of this information starts to go viral. And people are like, Well, wait a minute, Can I get an assumable? rate mortgages? So can you define for us? What is an assumable? Rate Mortgage? You know, how do these types of products work? And then give us the, you know, the real life of how viable these may or may not be as people are considering their options?

Tony Umholtz 20:26

Sure, well, they do exist. It wasn’t just an article in the Wall Street Journal. They do exist. They’ve been they’ve been out there for a long time. And there’s really only three programs that are that are available that are assumable. And one is called an FHA loan, which we’ve touched on the other ones, a VA loan, and the last one is at USDA loan. So they’re all three government programs. And the interesting thing about VA is you don’t necessarily have to be a veteran, you can assume it, you still have to be approved by the servicing lender. But you don’t have to be a veteran, which is interesting, you know, and so, you know, couple of the the pros and cons, obviously, the big pro is, first of all, you have to find a seller willing to do this, right? That’s the number one thing. The other thing would be, I had someone call me on one of these just asking my opinion. And it was it was there was the ability to assume the loan, it was a low fixed rate, it was around three and a quarter or something like that much lower than today’s environment. But the amount of appreciation above what that loan is, and you have to pay the seller for all their principal reduction, but the home was worth so much more now on the down payment is huge. So like in this, I’m just kind of give you an example: They may have borrowed 300,000, but the house is worth $420,000. Yep, so you’re gonna have to bring $420,000 to get to the what they owe, or sorry, $120,000. So it’s $120k. It’s a big down payment. So with these assumable loans, a lot of times the new buyer has to come and compensate the owner for the difference and it’s a huge amount, right, normally, because the markets run up so much and you may have put money down. Now those three programs do, I mean FHA does carry PMI, but the rates are so low, that it wouldn’t matter in a lot of these cases. The VA loan, you have to get approved by the servicing lender, okay, so they will have to approve you for the product, that means you’re going to have to meet all the criteria for the loan size, just like any other loan, it’s not going to be the same as communicating like with a team, like myself or another lender that is originating every day, you’re not going to get that service level, it’s going to be more like a we’ll get to it, we get to that type of call. And but it is possible, it’s just not easy. You know, and not only do you have to find the proper owner in home, you know, the home you like with the owner that’s willing to let go of a loan, you’d also have to compensate them and have to have some cash for a down payment. There’s a there’s those are the various that’s why I don’t think well, I read the article too. And I saw there was a guide starting to start a tech business to, it’s just going to be really hard. At the end of the day, you got to you got to make it all work and meet all these guidelines. And, and and just I just think it’s going to be a detriment since the amount of money folks will have to bring to get that rate.

Tim Ulbrich 23:26

And that’s a piece, Tony, to be honest, I didn’t think a whole lot about right that what you’re highlighting the example the, you know, $300,000 home that’s not worth $420k, and they’re bringing $120,000 of cash, like you then have to factor in all of this what’s the opportunity cost of bringing a bunch of cash? Not not even a hey do you have it, but what’s the opportunity costs of that $120,000 of cash and not just focus on the rate comparison? Great stuff. Great stuff. Well, let’s wrap up by talking about the pharmacist home loan product that we’ve collaborated in sharing with our community, Tony, now for several years available through First Horizon. You know, I think more than ever, this is an area that we see of interest among pharmacists, even though there’s gonna be less that are out there in the market right now that are buying obviously, we’re gonna have more coming in the future. But as we’ve seen appreciation, as we’ve seen, the home values go over time, obviously that down payment for a new practitioner, especially that first time homebuyer can be a huge barrier. And you know, one of the questions that comes up is, hey, how can I potentially buy a home, get into a home without having to put down a conventional 20% down as I’m trying to focus on student loans, daycare costs, investing all the other goals that we talk about. And so I think that’s why we were so excited about this collaboration several years ago and continue to be excited about the collaboration is what this product can do for for pharmacists in that position. So tell us a little bit more about the pharmacist home loan product who it’s for, minimum credit scores, maximum loan amounts, how the PMI, all of that works.

Tony Umholtz 24:55

Sure, sure. Well, you’re the minimum credit score I’ll start with that is 700. You have to have a 700 credit score. And and if you’re a little below that my team, we have ways to help give ideas and actually help with even giving like a scenario to roll up for quite a few folks to show them what they can get their credit scores to by consolidating debt or paying down a credit card, wherever it might be. The max loan amount right now it’s in most counties is $766,550. But there are areas of the country where we’ll go higher based upon that, that the, you know, the, the counties maximum loan amount. So especially like in California, in and around like Northern Virginia. There’s certain areas where we can actually lend a higher loan amount because the loan sizes are higher, even a $900,000. And there is no PMI, which is the big big driver. And that’s like a car payment for most people when they buy a home, so we can save that with this program. There is no prepayment penalty, which is big too, we need you need that that reassurance that you refinance, if rates drop. The, you know, with the reserves and so forth, there really isn’t a big need for that. There’s even the ability for the seller to give some concessions, which we have to watch that as things go on. But that’s something that, you know, if you want to get some of your closing costs covered, to keep more cash back, that’s something else it’ll allow too. And that’s bigger now, you know, Tim, where I see when a home needs a little bit of cosmetic repair, just that extra $5000-$6000 that the seller is willing to pay or compensate. That can be the the ticket to getting that work done. So those are the things that that that it’ll allow. So there’s a few extra little pieces there. But 700 is a minimum credit score, we do look at debt to income ratios around 43%, not to get too in the weeds, but income to debt ratio. It does take a lower factor for student loans than like a traditional Fannie Mae loan would we do or FHA. So there’s a little more flexibility but yes, pretty pretty much a quick summary.

Tim Ulbrich 27:10

And you may have said it and I didn’t hear it but remind us of a percent down required for a first time homebuyer versus second.

Tony Umholtz 27:19

Good catch Tim. Yeah, so first time homebuyer is 3% down. No PMI. If you’ve owned before, it’s 5% down. That’s the difference.

Tim Ulbrich 27:30

And we have all of this more information on our website. If you go to yourfinancialpharmacist.com/ home-loan. We’ll link to that in the show notes. As well, you get more information on the pharmacists home loan product and offering. We also have a form that you can fill out quickly there that will get you connected to Tony and his team to learn more as you’re looking at options. Whether you’re in the Hey, I’m ready to buy now, or I’m thinking about buying in six months, make sure to check out those resources and fill out that form so we can get you connected to Tony and his team. Tony, this has been great as always. Really appreciate your perspective. The other thing I just want to say to our community, if you have a question, you know, whether you’re buying, selling, thinking about buying and selling in 2024, you have a question that you’d like us to tackle. We’re gonna be bringing Tony back on the show here in a couple of months. Just send us an email [email protected]. In the subject line, just put home buying, home selling question, and we’ll make sure to tee that up for Tony on a future episode. So Tony, thanks so much for taking time to come on.

Tony Umholtz 28:24

Hey, thanks for having me. Tim. Great seeing you.

Tim Ulbrich 28:26

You too. Take care.

Tim Ulbrich 28:29

Before we wrap up today’s show, I want to again thank this week’s sponsor of the Your Financial Pharmacst Podcast, First Horizon. We’re glad to have found a solution for pharmacists that are unable to save 20% for a down payment on a home. A lot of pharmacists in the YFP community have taken advantage of First Horizon’s pharmacist home loan, which requires a 3% downpayment for a single family home or townhome for first time homebuyers and has no PMI on a 30-year fixed rate mortgage. To learn more about the requirements for First Horizon’s pharmacist home loan, and to get started with the pre- approval process, you can visit yourfinancialpharmacist.com/home-loan. Again, that’s yourfinancialpharmacist.com/home-loan.

Tim Ulbrich 29:12

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 to 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 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, publish them. 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 347: Redefining Retirement with David Zgarrick, Ph.D. (YFP Classic)

Posted on February 22, 2024February 22, 2024 by YFP Media

Dr. David Zgarrick, retired professor, redefines retirement after 30+ years in academia and shares insights on embracing a fulfilling post-pharmacy life.

Episode Summary

This week on the YFP Podcast, we revisit a classic. On episode #291, YFP Co-Founder & CEO, Tim Ulbrich, PharmD, welcomed Dr. David Zgarrick, a Professor Emeritus of Northeastern University, to the show to discuss redefining retirement. Some highlights from the episode include Dr. Zgarrick sharing his views on his next phase in life, after 30+ years in academia, as a preferment phase of his career. He shares how and why he started planning for his financial future early on in his life and career and hands down advice for new pharmacy graduates facing competing financial priorities. Throughout the discussion, listeners will hear Dr. Zgarrick speak on standout moments from his pharmacy career, the impact his financial choices have had on that journey, and ultimately his decision to enter this preferment stage of his career. He shares excitement for retirement and this next phase of his life, what he means by a preferment phase, and how retirement can be an opportunity to experience a rich, fulfilling life outside of pharmacy without the guilt of competing responsibilities. Listen for helpful advice Dr. Zgarrick took from his financial advisor regarding his first year of retirement and how factoring in a cross-country move played a role in his retirement and financial plan.

About Today’s Guest

David P. Zgarrick, Ph.D., is a Professor Emeritus in the School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences at Northeastern University. His prior positions include Associate Dean of Faculty at Northeastern’s Bouvé College of Health Sciences, Acting Dean of Northeastern’s School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences, Chair of the Northeastern’s Department of Pharmacy and Health Systems Sciences; John R. Ellis Distinguished Chair of Pharmacy Practice at Drake University College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences; and Vice-chair of Pharmacy Practice at Midwestern University Chicago College of Pharmacy. He is a licensed pharmacist, receiving a BS in Pharmacy from the University of Wisconsin – Madison and a MS and Ph.D. in Pharmaceutical Administration from The Ohio State University. Dr. Zgarrick taught pharmacy practice management and entrepreneurship in the health sciences. His scholarly interests include pharmacy workforce research, pharmacy management and operations, pharmacy education, and development of post-graduate programs. He has published over 150 peer-reviewed manuscripts and abstracts, is co-editor of the textbook Pharmacy Management: Essentials for All Practice Settings (5th Ed), and authored the book Getting Started as a Pharmacy Faculty Member. He was editor-in-chief of the Journal of Pharmacy Teaching, Executive Associate Editor of Currents in Pharmacy Teaching and Learning, and an editorial board member of Research in Social and Administrative Pharmacy. Dr. Zgarrick is active in many professional organizations, including the American Pharmacists Association (APhA) and the American Association of Colleges of Pharmacy (AACP). He served on AACP’s Board of Directors for 12 years, including as Treasurer from 2016 – 2022. Dr. Zgarrick also serves on the Board of Visitors for the University of Wisconsin School of Pharmacy, the Board of Grants for the American Foundation for Pharmaceutical Education, and is a Fellow of the American Pharmacists Association.

Key Points from the Episode

Why David views the next phase of life after 30+ years in academia, not as a retirement, but rather, as a preferment phase of his career.
How and why he started planning financially early in his career to put himself in a position of having choice.
Advice he has for new grads that are facing the financial headwind of many competing priorities including student loans, saving for the future, and buying a home.

Episode Highlights

“I think when one thinks about getting to this stage in a career, I mean, there’s been so much that’s been rewarding and interesting about the work that I do. But like anyone, none of our career paths or jobs are perfect. They all come with sometimes things that we would just assume not be doing. Or the longer we’ve been doing something, we get to know ourselves pretty well.” – David Zgarrick, Ph.D.

“Money is a means to an end. It is not an end in and of itself. The same as our career. We have to think of our career path as a means to an end. Not the end in and itself.” – David Zgarrick, Ph.D.

“I remember one time you posted on one of your blogs or something, what’s the most fun thing one can do when you’ve got some extra money? And I think I remember my comment to that post was: save it. And to some people that might not seem the most exciting thing in the world. But when I can take that money and put it in the bank, that tells me that I’m going to have that for – I’m going to be able to make decisions in a future based on having made that decision now to save that money. And it’s going to give me options that I know other people might not have if they didn’t save that money.” – David Zgarrick, Ph.D.

“We have money and we manage our money because we want to be able to live a life that’s meaningful to us. And however that is, I’m not here to judge how one spends their money or what one does with their money. So long as you’ve got the money to be able to do it, that’s our choices. It’s your choices to be able to do that how you wish.” – David Zgarrick, Ph.D.

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.

This week, I had the pleasure of welcoming Dr. David Zgarrick, a professor emeritus of Northeastern University College of Pharmacy. Some of my favorite moments from the show including hearing Dave share why he views the next phase of life after 30-plus years in Academia not as retirement but rather as a preferment phase of his career. How and why he started planning financially early in his career to put himself in a position of having choice? And advice he has for new grads that are facing the financial headwind of many competing financial priorities, including student loan debt, buying a home and saving for the future.

Now, before we jump into the show, I recognize that many listeners may not be aware of what the team at YFP planning does and 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 how working one-on-one with a certified financial planner may help you achieve your financial goals, you can book a free discovery call at yfpplanning.com.

Whether or not YFP planning’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 on my interview with professor emeritus Dr. Dave Zgarrick.

[INTERVIEW]

[00:01:29] TU: Dave, welcome to the show.

[00:01:30] Dr. DZ: Thank you. Thank you. It’s great to be here, Tim.

[00:01:33] TU: Well, I’m really excited to have you on to dig into your professional journey and the impact that finances has had throughout your journey so that you could retire or perhaps better said, as we’ll talk about, take a half-time break at the age of 57. And you and I have known each other for several years through the academic circles. And when I saw your post on LinkedIn about entering this next phase, I knew that your story would have such a great impact on our community. So, thanks so much for coming on the show.

[00:02:00] Dr. DZ: Thank you. Thank you so much for having me. I’m really great to be here. And it’s great to think about half time. It was interesting, I’m a Green Bay Packers Fan. You’re a Buffalo Bills fan. Just thinking about half time. We’re about halfway through the NFL season. It’s time to make some adjustments. And I think both the Packers and Bills will have some adjustments to make. And so, we can talk about how we make financial adjustments as well.

[00:02:22] TU: I love that. I love that. Let’s start with your pharmacy career. When did that Journey begin and what drew you into the profession to begin with?

[00:02:31] Dr. DZ: I’m from an interesting community. I’m from Marshfield, Wisconsin, which is a relatively small community in Central Wisconsin. But it’s a very unique community and that Marshfield has a very large medical center. It’s the Marshfield Clinic. It has now the Marshall Medical Center.

I grew up with health and healthcare even though no one in my family was a healthcare professional. My father was an administrator for a dairy corporation. My mother is an educator. She taught special education. I was not brought up in a healthcare background. But I had lots of friends and knew lots of people that were in the healthcare space.

And as I was going through high school, I was thinking about health and healthcare a lot and thinking about wanting to go down that pathway. I was reasonably good at all the things they tell you you’re supposed to be good at in high school, math and science, and communications and all those things.

I had honestly probably was thinking first about medicine at the time. I was going to go to medical school. I guess, in some ways I was very fortunate. I went to a career day seminar and one of the speakers that came to that career day seminar was someone from the University of Wisconsin School of Pharmacy. And talked a little bit about pharmacy and what pharmacists did and so forth. And pharmacy hit a good spot.

And again, I’ll give my parents credit. They were very pragmatic with me when it came to where are you going to go to college? And what are you going to major in college? That kind of stuff. And they were said, “You know, you can go to college anywhere you want. And you can major in anything you want so long as you can support yourself when you’re done.”

And to that end, pharmacy seemed it was a great at the time. Keep in mind. It was a five-year BS degree at the time, which was a great fit. Because in some ways I’m thinking, “Okay, I’m going to learn all these things that are going to help me if I go to medical school. Become a physician. I’m going to learn a lot about drugs, and a lot about health and health care and so forth.” Worst case scenario, if I don’t get medical school, I could be a pharmacist and I’ll be able to support myself.

I’ll say two things happened along the way. One, I recognized that being a physician wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. And especially the pathway towards becoming a physician. It’s not just medical school, of course. It’s residency and training and everything that that life brings. And then I also learned that there’s so much more to pharmacy than I had envisioned there was. Probably many people, when you start down this path. Growing up in Central Wisconsin, honestly, my only connection with pharmacy was with community pharmacy.

I saw people, primarily men, wearing white coats working behind counters and seeing them take big bottles of pills and put them into little bottles of pills. And didn’t think that much more of it. Obviously, as I learned so much more of about not only what the role of pharmacy was at that time but what we were seeing it begin to evolve to. Towards not just dispensing medications, of course, but really using our knowledge and expertise to help maximize the benefits from medication therapy.

I was fortunate. I had some really good experiences along the way. I hooked up with folks that were doing research in a variety of different ways. I spent one summer doing medical research working in a lab. And honestly said to myself, “That’s not what I wanted to do.”

But I spent more time doing research with social administrative scientists and learning about the kinds of questions that they asked. My parents will tell you I am one of those people that always ask questions. I was one of those always kids that always asked, “Why? Why? Why?”

And as you can imagine, parents, you being a parent yourself, you’re probably – at a certain point, you just want to tell your kids go figure it out yourself. Because, honestly, that’s what we do as researchers. We ask questions and we have the tools to be able to learn how to figure it out ourselves.

Now, my questions I was very interested in asking were honestly about pharmacists themselves. The work they do. How they’re rewarded for that? What their ambitions are? Where they see themselves going with their careers? As a pharmacy workforce researcher, my interest is very much in who pharmacists are and what they want to do with that pathway.

And so, I got my pharmacy degree from Wisconsin. I went and worked as a community pharmacist for several years. Worked for a company that’s called Shopko. Unfortunately, Shopko is no longer with us. But many of us probably remember what Shopko was. And for a number of years, they were a great place to work with because I really used my knowledge as a pharmacist and as a pharmacy manager working for Shopko.

But then went back to – went to Ohio State for graduate school. That was a good place to be able to go to be able to learn the research tools that I needed to have to be able to do the research that I do is. As well as to get more experience with teaching and educating.

I had gotten some experiences as a teaching assistant, as an undergraduate student at Wisconsin already. But then at Ohio State, I got even more experience and learned what it was like to be in part of a classroom of 100 students and have to be prepared and have to help students understand how does their knowledge of this particular topic fit into a bigger picture of all of the things that we expect them to know as a pharmacist?

As I finished up my graduate work, I had options. I could go work for the pharmaceutical industry. I could go work with a managed care organization. I could work with wholesalers like Cardinal, or McKesson, or Bergen or something like that. There were lots of options.

Ultimately, I chose the academic path because I really enjoyed that ability to not just continue to do research but to connect with students and to really – it felt that I could have the biggest impact in my profession. And ultimately, the biggest impact on patients by continuing to train and help educate the next future generations of people that are going to go into pharmacy.

[00:09:00] TU: I love that, Dave. And you would ultimately spend 30-plus years across three different institutions in that area of work and I know have had an impact on so many other colleagues that you’ve crossed path with, obviously, the thousands probably of students that you worked with over the years.

[00:09:17] Dr. DZ: It’s interesting. At this point of one’s career when – yeah, one naturally does kind of look back at those types of things. And I started adding up the numbers between the institutions I’ve taught. And I’ve been the professor of probably close to 5,000 students over the years. I’m editor of a textbook and I work with several others on that book as well that I know is used in most colleges of pharmacy in the United States. And including not many colleges of pharmacy across the world. And so, it’s kind of cool to think about how one has an impact not necessarily even just directly like we are used to with our patients. But that indirect impact that the work that we do can be used by so many people.

[00:10:01] TU: One of the reasons I was so excited for this interview, Dave, is that I think there’s often a perception around retirement that folks might be limping towards that line. Or begrudgingly working late in their career. Or there’s a lot of energy around early retirement. But often, I think that’s with the context of that someone may not necessarily be enjoying the work that they’re doing.

And what’s really interesting about your story is the great career you have had. The fulfillment and joy you had in your work. The impact you had on many others. But also, this excitement around the next phase of life. And to me, that is what – when we talk about preferred retirement, when we talk about what retirement may look like and the vision of like that, that to me is the success I know that I’m yearning for, is to have an option and choice, of course. But also, to look back and feel like, “Wow! I love the time that I had and the impact and the opportunities I had.”

And you shared something really interesting on LinkedIn. You said that, “While I may have concluded the pharmacy educator phase of my career, I certainly don’t think of myself as being done.” And to borrow a phrase from Lucinda Main, someone we both know. You said you’re entering the preferment phase of your career. Fortunate to have the luxury of choosing what you’d like to do. Who I’d like to do it with? And taking the time to figure it all out. I love that, the preferment phase. Talk to us more about what that means to you.

[00:11:31] Dr. DZ: Thank you so much, because I feel so fortunate to be able to be at this phase of my career. And I want to share my wife, Michelle, who’s also a pharmacist who I met in graduate school at Ohio State. She has also started at her preferment phase as well. She was a pharmacist. Worked in the hospitals and outpatient oncology settings for many years. And has decided to start her preferment stage at this point with us.

But, no. I think when one thinks about getting to this stage in a career, I mean, there’s been so much that’s been rewarding and interesting about the work that I do. But like anyone, none of our career paths or jobs are perfect. They all come with sometimes things that we would just assume not be doing. Or the longer we’ve been doing something, we get to know ourselves pretty well.

And I say to myself, “Well, these are things that I really like that I’m really interested in.” And then there’s other parts of my job that I’m doing that, “Well, I’m not so interested in those things.” And I’m just doing them because at a certain point you kind of feel you have to. And I guess this is, again, a good position to be able to be in.

When one thinks about preferment, I mean, yes, I stepped off in academia what we call the tenure track. I was a tenured full professor, which in many respects is the ideal position. It’s the golden ring that many people go towards. This idea that you have a lifetime contract. And I was very fortunate to have a lifetime contract at a leading university and was well-compensated for what I did. I’m very fortunate to have been in that position.

That said, if you’re staying in that position, you’re going to keep doing all of those things essentially for the rest of your career. And I just kind of said to myself, “Maybe not.” Maybe there are other things I’d like to do. Again, there’s things I like doing. There’s things that I don’t like doing. And then there’s this whole outside of my job life, the things that make me, so to speak, that I kind of wanted to think I’d like to be able to do them without feeling guilty that I should be doing something else. And so, no, I decided that this was a good point in my life to be able to make this type of change.

[00:14:01] TU: Mm-hmm. Yeah, and I think – No pressure, Dave. But I think you and maybe Lucinda should work on a book on the preferment phase. Because I think – and we try to find this balance. But we focus so heavily on the dollars and cents, right? Really important. We got to have enough to cover our needs and the goals we have. Whatever those may be. But we tend to overlook both in retirement as well as throughout our careers. What does it mean to live a rich life? Not just dollars and cents. But at the end of the day, money is a tool, right?

[00:14:34] Dr. DZ: Oh, exactly. Exactly. I couldn’t agree with you more. Money is a means to an end. It is not an end in and of itself. The same as our career. We have to think of our career path as a means to an end. Not the end in and itself.

Again, when I stepped back and thought about that, I think about my family. And it was difficult sometimes especially during the pandemic. I mean, my family was back in the midwest, in Wisconsin, in Chicago and so forth. And there was a long time where we literally couldn’t travel to go see them. My wife’s family was in Ohio. The same thing. My wife was working at a hospital and they’ve literally told her, “Well, if you leave the state of Massachusetts to go visit your family, you have to quarantine for two weeks before you come back to work. And that, just for a long time, wasn’t viable for either of us.

We started thinking about our families. We started thinking about the things we enjoy doing. I mean, I enjoy skiing. I enjoy getting out on my bike and going on rides and that kind of stuff. And some of the mental type things that we all like doing and so forth. The things that honestly make us us.

I look to this point of life that we’ve entered now where it’s giving us more space and time to be able to do that and not feel like, “Oh, I’ve got to do this job aspect of my job or that aspect of my job.” I mean, we’ve figured out ways to be able to manage that.

[00:16:09] TU: One thing I mentioned to you before we recorded is I’m reading right now a book called Retirement Stepping Stones by Tony Hixson. We’ll link to that in the show notes. And this was recommended to me by a shared colleague that really John [inaudible 00:16:23] said, “Hey, Tim you got to read this book,” to really have perspective on what he and I were talking about at the time, which is more this concept of life planning. Again, need the dollars and cents. But also, what are the goals? What’s the vision we have to live life well?

And Tony Hickson, in this book, talks about retirement not as a finish line but how we need to be thinking about as a half time. And I love that. Because what do we do at halftime, right? You already kind of mentioned it when our Bills and Packers played. You adjust. You adjust and you have a plan.

Yes, it’s been informed a little bit by what’s been happening. But it’s a time to reset, to look ahead and to make sure we have a plan. We don’t just go out into the third quarter and hope it’s going to work out, right?

My question for you is it’s clear to me, Dave, when I hear you talk talking about investment of more time with family, with the outdoors, and skiing and traveling. That there’s these other goals. But there’s been thought and intention behind this transition. And talk us through that a little bit more and how you and your wife got to this decision point and ultimately painted the picture of what this vision would look like.

[00:17:28] Dr. DZ: Yeah, I think for many of us – I mean, in some ways, it’s been a conversation we’ve thought about for a long time. I mean, we knew from this point that we started working that someday we were going to retire. We weren’t just going to stay chained to our desks, or to our hospitals, or universities forever and ever.

We knew that that day was going to come. We didn’t necessarily know when that was going to be. But we started saving and thinking accordingly for that knowing that it would come. And so, there was an aspect of having a financial plan that we started to put in place.

Moving forward, I’ll say, like many people, we did get to the pandemic and kind of said to ourselves, “As our jobs were changing and our careers were changing, are these changes we wanted to make –” I mean, in some ways we made them because we had to. We all adjusted and so forth. But did we want to continue down this pathway? And I think we put some thought and energy into this.

And then now, I’m going to say we also sat down with a financial advisor. And actually, I’m going to mention just a little bit thinking about finances. Because, of course, there is a financial aspect to be able to make these decisions. Like I said, my wife and I had started saving. And we are savers. That’s part of our culture.

I remember one time you posted on one of your blogs or something, what’s the most fun thing one can do when you’ve got some extra money? And I think I remember my comment to that post was save it. And to some people that might not seem the most exciting thing in the world. But when I can take that money and put it in the bank, that tells me that I’m going to have that for – I’m going to be able to make decisions in a future based on having made that decision now to save that money. And it’s going to give me options that I know other people might not have if they didn’t save that money.

Like I said, we were pretty good savers. That said, we didn’t have – let’s say, we didn’t have a sense of when halftime was or how we were actually going to go about making that decision. And so, in some ways I was really fortunate that a financial planner, so to speak, somewhat fell into my lab.

My parents had set up a life insurance policy for me when I was born. Like, many families do with their kids. And it was a whole life policy that had a relatively small cash value. But let’s just say a number of years later somebody from that company reached out to me and said, “Have you thought about your retirement and retirement planning?” And for years I just kind of put them off thinking, “Oh, you’re just somebody trying to sell me more insurance or something like that.” And didn’t pay much attention to them.

But then, ultimately, we just kind of – I’ll give him credit for his persistence. But every year, he came back and touched base. How’s things going and all that kind of stuff? And then ultimately kind of said – it kind of hit me that, “Yeah, I could really benefit the perspective from somebody like this.”

Because like I said, I’ve done – I’m a pretty informed investor so to speak. I’ve done a pretty good job of saving and thinking about where my money was going to go, and making our money work the best for us and all that kind of stuff. But that still doesn’t give us necessarily a sense of when can you say it’s half time? And when can you make that decision?

Tom, our financial advisor, really helped us with that thought process. And I’ll say I remember this very well because it was January 2021. We’d all been living through the pandemic for the better part of that year. And he just kind of sat down with us and said, “Well, okay, given what you’ve saved to this point, if you guys decided today if you wanted to not continue to do the jobs you’re doing right now and start living off of your savings based on the lifestyle that you have, of course. The spending patterns that you have and everything. He told us, essentially, you could live within – you could live to be 95 and you have a 95% chance of not running out of money. And we kind of thought to ourselves, “Wow! That’s a really good thing to hear.”

And just having that conversation really kind of opened up our eyes to, “Well, what could we do? What are the things?” Not so much the things that we felt like we had to do, but what do we want to do? Where could we go from here? And I think that’s where we really started saying, “Okay, this is – we’re going to start moving down this path.”

I mean, I didn’t – needless to say, didn’t immediately go to my boss and say I’m leaving. We had a very good conversation about how this was going to look. And honestly, it was more than a year and a half after I had that conversation. I didn’t officially retire from Northeastern until this past August. We had that conversation. My wife had that conversation with her folks at our hospital. And then we started planning for what our next phase of our life is going to be.

We started thinking where do we want to be? Do we want to stay in the Northeast? Or do we want to start thinking about other parts of the country that we might want to live in and so forth? We landed on Denver is where we decided we wanted to be. We started going through the work of preparing to sell our places in the Northeast and find a place to live in Colorado.

And I’m going to add real estate to that mix of your financial picture that you go through in making these decisions about what your total financial picture is. Because we’ve always thought of our homes not just as a place to live but as an investment that we are going to buy and hopefully sell for more than we paid for them at some point.

But we went ahead and started making those decisions and putting that into motion. And as of last March, or this past March, we made the move from Boston to Denver. nd I’ve been very happy that we made that move. It’s worked out very well for us.

[00:23:59] TU: Let me ask for, I suspect, some pre-retirees that are listening thinking, “Ugh! Dave, I love the story and the journey.” Maybe they even look at their numbers and say, “I think it’s there.” But then they are living the reality of 8%,9% inflation, market volatility. There’s so much discussion out there of when you retire and what the market’s doing can have a long-term impact on returns and how you mitigate that risk around retirement. Talk us through – for you, obviously, we can plan scenarios. I don’t know if any of us were planning for this type of inflation volatility.

[00:24:35] Dr. DZ: Well, that’s a really good point. And believe me, I’ve had some thoughts about what we’ve gone through and in terms of the timing. I mean, when I think about even what the environment was back in early 2021 where in some ways, yeah, the stock market was starting to come back pretty strong at that time. Inflation was still pretty low. Interest rates were really low.

One of the things – Needless to say, we go into an environment now. One of the things my financial advisor advised us of. And I can’t begin to tell you what a good piece of advice this was, was to be reasonably liquid going into what essentially will be your first year of – I’ll keep using the word preferment because I’m just not convinced that I’m retired.

But he said, “Basically, you want to have a year’s worth of spending money, liquids, such that you don’t have to sell stocks in order to be able to have money to live on essentially.”

And I’ll say this, it was actually relatively easy for us to be able to do that not just with some of our financial instruments that we had been using. We used them for a variety of instruments. I mean, from equity, to bonds and other types of things that everyone else uses. But again, this was the aspect of buying and selling real estate. We owned two properties outright in Massachusetts – one in Massachusetts. One in Maine. And when we sold those, we were able to purchase a home in Denver, as well as have a little bit of cash on hand.

And having that cash on hand has made things a lot easier. Now, no one likes 8%, 9% inflation of course. And it’s certainly taken a little bit of a bite out of that cash at hand. But it’s also saved us from having to go and sell stocks at a time where stocks have taken like in the past year – What? A 20% dive.

The one thing, thinking about stocks – I mean, I have confidence that the markets will come back. I’ve seen markets go down before and they’ve always come back. And looking at our economy and the things that underpin it, the market will come back. I don’t know exactly when and how it will. If I knew that, I probably wouldn’t be doing the preferment thing. I’d be making a lot more money as a financial advisor.

But anyway – but I had that confidence that it will. And with that confidence I know that essentially the way we have things structured, this combination of different assets that we’re utilizing to be able to make these decisions. It’s not just one type of asset class that you look at. It’s not just your 401k, for example. There’s a variety of different ways that we can get to what we’re doing.

And you know what? Another thing, just to get to think about this preferment thing, too. I mean, preferment does not mean not working or no income. It’s likely going to mean different types of things. I mean, I’ll say, as I’ve moved into this phase, I’m doing what most of us would call consulting work. I’m working with a couple of different universities right now. I want to add some teaching stuff. I want to add some more administrative stuff. Helping them deal with some issues that they’re dealing with and so forth.

And, again, just utilizing the expertise that I’ve developed over the years to be able to do some things. I mean, it’s bringing in a small amount of income. Definitely not as much as I was making when I was working full-time. But that’s okay. I don’t need as much as I was working full-time.

My wife’s in the same position. I mean, she is a pharmacist. She could go back and work as a pharmacist. I mean, especially right now, there’s lots of demand. She could. I don’t actually know if that’s really what she wants to do. She’s been telling me that her next job may be working at a Trader Joe’s. And for her, that, again, this could be the perfect thing for her.

[00:29:02] TU: Store discount. Bonus. Right?

[00:29:03] Dr. DZ: Exactly. Exactly. Believe me, that comes in handy. But again, that’s the sense of my wife and I were both very money pharmacists. We were well-compensated people. We were not hurting for income. But I just took a step back and said, “I don’t need or even want to live my life where I have to depend on having that level of income for the rest of my life. I just looked at it and said, “I can do the things I want to do and live a very good life on not having that level of income.”

[00:29:44] TU: Yeah. And that takes me – Dave, I’ve been thinking as you’re talking, you’ve said several things that have caught my attention. Your somewhat inherent behavior around saving. Really, this mindset around, “If I had an option to spend extra money, I’d save it because I could think about the growth and delay gratification into the future.” And those are a sneak peek into a mindset around how we think about and how we handle our money.

And it feels like, as you’re talking, that this is something that has been ingrained in you for a long time either through personal interest, research, family experience, whatever may be the case.

[00:30:20] Dr. DZ: We were talking a little bit about this before we came online. I mean, it’s almost fair to say I’ve been thinking about this essentially from the time I was born. Because I was born into a family of savers essentially. I like to use the example of my folks – again, like I said, my father was an accountant who went to work in the dairy industry in Wisconsin. And my mother was a teacher. Between the two of them, they had a decent middle-class income, of course, and everything. But again, always saved. Part of it was to be able to save to send myself and my two brothers to college, which again I cannot begin to tell you how fortunate I was to be able to have parents who had saved for our college education and then gave us that ability to be able to start our lives without the debt that I know that many of our students have today as they’re getting that education. That, again, I know that I was so fortunate. And I’m very thankful to my parents for that.

But even more than that, it created a mindset in me that I saw what they did to be able to not only to provide a college education for me and my brothers, but to create the life for themselves as well. And my dad also retired at the age of 57. And now, – And again, retirement for him wasn’t retirement. It was. And I’ll still say is. Because my dad’s 82-years-old and is still doing this. It’s very much preferment.

My dad was – Like I said, he’s an account who had always specialized in tax. And while he was working in the dairy industry, he started doing people’s taxes during tax season. And then when he decided he didn’t want to work in the dairy industry anymore, he just said, “Well, what am I going to do?” He just essentially start – his side gig has been doing taxes. And he still has about 200 clients to this day, including myself.

[00:32:32] TU: In his 80s, right?

[00:32:32] Dr. DZ: In his 80s. It is that – I’ll say for this. It’s that great mental thing for him. It keeps him very engaged. A matter of fact, every year, this time of year actually, he goes back to tax school. It’s like a one-week seminar that he goes and learns about like, “Okay, what are all the new tax codes?” and all the new things that he needs to be able to work with people as a tax advisor on and all that kind of stuff.

And so, every year he goes to just that. And every year he shares it with me and tells me what I should be doing and how I should be preparing myself financially and that kind of stuff. But again, I just give so much credit to my parents because they had instilled in me mindsets about the value of saving and about just think about your finances really is just another one of our tools in our toolbox so to speak. It’s not an end of in itself. It’s a means to an end.

We have money and we manage our money because we want to be able to live a life that’s meaningful to us. And however that is, I’m not here to judge how one spends their money or what one does with their money. So long as you’ve got the money to be able to do it, that’s our choices. It’s your choices to be able to do that how you wish. But it’s just having those tools and having that mindset to be able to make those decisions has been a really great thing.

I remember probably likely somebody we both know, Karen [inaudible 00:34:13]. I went to graduate school with Karen back at Ohio State. She introduced me back, and I want to say this was probably 1990, 1991, to this little financial tool called Quicken.

And I have to think back. Back in 1990, ’91, I don’t know if you remember the Macintosh computers that were literally like these cubes. And so, I got one of the first versions of Quicken for Mac that was – it started – And honestly, it was this way of tracking your finances. Tracking how you use your money. Doing the checkbook thing but doing it on the register on Quicken and everything. And then the fact that it keeps track of everything.

I mean, I’m pretty proud to say now, I – what is it now? 30 some years later, I have – I still use Quicken to this day. And I have a record of my financial transactions that goes back over 30 years. And that’s been valuable to me. I mean, I can’t say that I go back and look at every transaction from 1992. But it does tell me when – let’s say if my financial advisor wanted to know, “What kind of money do you need to live on?” so to speak. Well, I had that data. I could get those answers relatively easily. And that’s been – Again, one of my bits of advice is whether it be Quicken or any of the other tools out there that help us get in that picture of ourselves financially, utilize those tools. I say I probably put one to two hours every other week into managing my various aspects of my finances. And for me, that’s always been time very well spent.

[00:36:14] TU: Yes. Yeah. And the consistency and compound effect of that is huge over time. And it’s interesting, you’re talking about tools and Quicken. Here in 2022, obviously, there are more tools than ever, apps, that will help us, software tools. But I would argue, some of the mindset and behavior, it is getting harder and harder just because of all the things that are competing –

[00:36:39] Dr. DZ: Or time and attention.

[00:36:40] TU: Yeah, tracking, easier execution I think is even becoming a little bit harder. Let me ask you one final question. I know we have some new practitioners that are listening. You obviously work closely with students and new grads as well. But folks that are feeling the headwind financially despite obviously making a good income, having a good potential for their income into the future but they’re facing large student loan debts. They’re looking at potentially the housing market and wanting to buy a home in this market. Inflation. Tim and Dave, you’re telling me I need to start saving early and max out my retirement accounts. I need an emergency fund. I need to get rid of my credit card debt. Just overwhelming, right? What advice would you have for those folks about some of the early wins and behaviors and habits that they can employ?

[00:37:32] Dr. DZ: I think you nailed it right there. Early wins. One step at a time. Rather than getting overwhelmed by all of these things that are hitting you. Focus on one thing that you can do that you can impact.

Yeah, a good example would be like my wife. Or my wife and I, shortly after we got married, she did have a little bit of college loan debt. And she was somebody – she had gotten a bachelor’s degree. She went to graduate school. And then she decided to go to pharmacy school. And so, it took her a little longer to go down that path. And she had a little bit of financial debt. We decided to focus – to prioritize on paying down that debt. It was the highest interest debt that we had.

And we did the things that we had to, which in the short term, yeah, everyone probably meant making some sacrifices. There were some vacations we didn’t go on. Maybe we bought the used car rather than the new car or something like that. There are all the little things that one does to be able to then have a little bit more money to put in the areas that you want to prioritize.

So, whether it’d be paying down student loan debt, or sitting to make a down payment on a house, or all the other things. I mean, the great news is, as pharmacists, we are relatively high-income folks. We have access to funds. It’s just a matter of how we decide to utilize those funds.

But, yeah, should focus on that one thing. Don’t get overwhelmed by all of the different things and thinking to myself, “Oh, gosh. There’s so much going on here. How am I going to handle all of this?” You can handle things. Do one thing at a time. Then use that leverage, that success you have in doing one thing. So, then go do the next thing.

[00:39:22] TU: Yeah, I love that, Dave. I talk a lot with new practitioners about that early momentum. And while any one financial decision or win may not feel monumental in the moment, it’s the compound effect in the momentum that comes from that over time. And there’s a natural excitement of like, “Okay, small win. What’s next?” Another win, what’s next? What’s next? And you look back three, five, ten years later, and some of those behaviors start to really compound and add up over time.

[00:39:49] Dr. DZ: Oh, that’s the one thing. I remember back, I was thinking in high school, you learn about compound interest. And the idea that interest builds on interest builds on interest. And again, I think about 30, 40 years into my career span, so to speak. The decisions we made very early on are definitely paying dividends today and how they do things.

Now, that said, I also don’t want to turn off or upset your readers who maybe aren’t that young anymore or maybe thinking of themselves, “Gee! I didn’t do that when I was you know 25-years-old. What am I going to do?” It’s never too late to start. And there’s a lot that one can do to make good financial decisions even – again, another really good habit I picked up from my parents is while I have credit cards and use them liberally, it’s with the sense of never – my dad just instilled in me. You will pay off your credit card in full every month. You will never carry a balance on these cards.

And that’s, again, always just been part of my mindset, that I use a credit card. I get that bill out of it every – Actually, I don’t even get a bill obviously. Everything’s electronic these days. And honestly, it’s automatically withdrawn from my checking account. But I – essentially, I use the credit that’s available. Credit is not necessarily a bad thing. I’m not one of these people who will say never use credit cards. Or don’t take out interests. And don’t take out loans. I mean, heck, a lot of us, the reality is we wouldn’t go to college. We wouldn’t be able to buy a home if we didn’t take out debt. Debt can and is a good thing. It just has to be used in balance with everything else. Because if it’s not in balance, it will take over in a not so good way.

[00:41:55] TU: Well, this has been fantastic. I knew it would. And it’s delivered. And I’m excited to get this out to our community. And really excited, Dave, for you in this next phase of your preferment. I think I’m going to adopt that term.

[00:42:09] Dr. DZ: That’s a great thing. I do think Lucinda and I should get together and write a book on preferment. But as always, one of the great things about being an educator is – you know, Tim, is you – it’s not just the impact you make on students when they’re in your classroom. It’s the impact you see as their careers move forward.

And I’ve been so blessed and fortunate to be able to stay in touch with many of my former students and not only see the successes they’re having and the things that they’re achieving in their lives, but to be able to share what we’re all doing and so forth. And to that end, I hope some of my former students are out there and are seeing this. And I would love to be able to stay in touch if there are things that I can share more with your listeners about how one prepares to get to the point in this life. The thing, decisions that we make as we get to this point.

I will still say, keeping on our football analogy, it’s still half time. And my wife and I are sitting in the locker room still making those plans for what we’re going to go out and do in the third quarter. And just like I’m offering advice to some folks. I’m also appreciating advice from people who have been down this pathway ourselves. And whether it’d be books or whether it’d be other folks that have made similar decisions to what we have. There’s a lot to learn. And to me, that’s always been the best part about the academic path, is it’s not the teaching. It’s the learning.

[00:43:45] TU: Absolutely.

[00:43:46] Dr. DZ: And the more that we can learn, the better off we’ll all be.

[00:43:49] TU: Well, that’s great. We’ll link to, in the show notes, your LinkedIn if folks aren’t already connecting with you. I know that’s a way they can reach out. All right. Thanks again, Dave. I really appreciate it.

[00:43:58] Dr. DZ: Thank you. Appreciate it a lot. Thank you very much.

[OUTRO]

[00:44:01] 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 pharmacists unless otherwise noted, and constitute judgments as of the date publish. Such information may contain forward-looking statements are not intended to be guarantees of future events. Actual results could differ materially from those anticipated in the forward-looking statements. For more information, please visit yourfinancialpharmacists.com/disclaimer.

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

[END]

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YFP 346: Developing a Budget That Works…And You Don’t Hate with Tim Ulbrich

Posted on February 15, 2024February 14, 2024 by YFP Media

Tim Ulbrich shares the importance of setting a budget for achieving your financial goals and five steps to help you get started.

Episode Summary

In this week’s episode, we learn all about one of the key first steps to mastering your money: creating a budget. You’ll learn how to implement a budgeting system that not only works, but is also enjoyable. Tim Ulbrich, YFP Founder and CEO shares a practical five-step process to help you get started. A budget isn’t a restrictive tool, but an important instrument that can empower you on your journey toward financial well-being and help align your money with your vision for a rich and fulfilling life.

About Today’s Guest

Tim Ulbrich is the Co-Founder and CEO of Your Financial Pharmacist. Founded in 2015, YFP is a fee-only financial planning firm and connects with the YFP community of 15,000+ pharmacy professionals via the Your Financial Pharmacist Podcast podcast, blog, website resources and speaking engagements. To date, YFP has partnered with 75+ organizations to provide personal finance education.

Tim received his Doctor of Pharmacy degree from Ohio Northern University and completed postgraduate residency training at The Ohio State University. He spent 9 years on faculty at Northeast Ohio Medical University prior to joining Ohio StateUniversity College of Pharmacy in 2019 as Clinical Professor and Director of the Master’s in Health-System Pharmacy Administration Program.

Tim is the host of the Your Financial Pharmacist Podcast which has more than 1 million downloads. Tim is also the co-author of Seven Figure Pharmacist: How to Maximize Your Income, Eliminate Debt and Create Wealth. Tim has presented to over 200 pharmacy associations, colleges, and groups on various personal finance topics including debt management, investing, retirement planning, and financial well-being.

Key Points from the Episode

Budgeting for financial freedom. [0:00]
Pharmacist financial success and budgeting. [3:51]
Financial health check and budgeting. [7:32]
Setting a financial vision and budget. [11:40]
Budgeting methods for personal finance. [16:04]
Budgeting and financial planning. [20:54]
Budgeting and financial planning for pharmacists. [26:06]

Episode Highlights

“So I think it’s safe to say that most pharmacists didn’t spend six to eight plus years training to get into this profession, to work hard to find themselves living paycheck to paycheck.” – Tim Ulbrich

“So, if we can identify in advance what our goals are, and we can identify how much we have to allocate towards those goals, then the next step we’ll talk about is how to actually make sure we distribute them accordingly. All the sudden, we’re thinking in a way that we are pre funding our goals, right really important, rather than waiting to see what’s left over at the end of the month.” -Tim Ulbrich

Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode

Episode Transcript

Tim Ulbrich 00:00

Hey everybody, Tim Ulbrich here and thank you for listening to the YFP Podcast where each week we strive to inspire and encourage you on your path towards achieving financial freedom. This week, I’m digging into how you can develop a budgeting system and process that works and is one that you don’t hate. During the episode, we’re walking through five steps that you can follow to implement your own budget. But before doing that, we’ll discuss why it’s crucial to do a financial vitals check along with some vision setting to get clear on what it looks like to be living your rich life.

Tim Ulbrich 00:32

Alright, YFP community, I’m really excited to invite you to our next webinar on March 7, at 8:30pm/Eastern: Budgeting Blueprint, What Zero Based Budgeting Is, Why It Works and How to Start One. This webinar is different than webinars we’ve done before. Not only am I gonna dive into the ins and outs of the zero based budget and the power behind assigning each dollar a job, but I’m going to be doing a live demo of a zero based budget using the YFP budget template. And we’re going to be anonymously featuring real pharmacists’ budgets for you to see. So here’s the deal. First, I want you to register for the webinar. It’s free, visit yourfinancialpharmacist.com/budgetwebinar to save your seat. Again, that’s yourfinancialpharmacist.com/budgetwebinar. Second, we’re gonna be giving away three $50 amazon gift cards to pharmacists who submit their budget to be featured and who attend the webinar live. Here’s how you can do that: you go to download your FREE zero based budgeting template at yourfinancialpharmacist.com/budget again, yourfinancialpharmacist.com/budget, then go ahead and fill out your budget with your numbers. If you’ve never used a zero based budget before, don’t worry instructions are included in the template that will help you walk through the process. Make sure to save your budget, send us an email with that budget attached at [email protected]. And make sure to include the word “budget” in the subject line so we can quickly identify your template. In the email, I would love for you to also share any additional information that would be helpful for me to know, whether you’re a single income earner, whether you have dual incomes in the household, if you have any children, where you live. And of course, if you have any other questions that you’d like me to answer as it relates to your budget template. Then make sure to attend the webinar live for your chance to win one of the three $50 amazon gift cards. If you don’t want to turn your budget, no problem make sure to register for the webinar and we’ll send you the replay if you can’t join us live. Can’t wait to see you there and see the real life budgets from pharmacists in the YFP community.

Tim Ulbrich 02:37

Hi guys, Tim Ulbrich here. This week, we’re gonna be talking all about how to develop a budgeting system that works and hopefully is one that you don’t hate. Now if we’re being honest with ourselves, who gets a little nauseous when the topic of budgeting comes up? I mean, besides the future financial nerds out there, not many are a fan of the whole budgeting thing. Quote, “It takes too much time.” “I already know how much I spend.” “I don’t know how to make one and follow it.” “I’m afraid of what I might find when I track my expenses.” “I don’t like to be so restricted.” “I make enough money so I don’t need a budget.” These are just some of the most common reasons that I hear for all of the hate surrounding budgeting. So in that light, what if we thought of the budget instead as a mechanism by which we achieve our financial goals? It’s simply the roadmap. It’s the execution plan that we have for the vision for living our rich life. It’s the way that we’re going to achieve what we set out to achieve. Now what are the most common things I hear pharmacists say is, “Tim, I make a great income. But I don’t feel like I’m progressing financially.” And one of the greatest threats to a pharmacist long term financial success is believing that a six figure income equals financial success. That mindset I can guarantee you will hinder progress. And here’s why if you take the average pharmacists salary, a reasonable take home pay after taxes after health insurance premiums after any type of employer retirement contribution is about $7,000 per month, right, give or take. And if you assume the average student loan debt on a 10 year standard repayment, plus let’s just say a $400,000 home and interest rates today that adds up to about $4,500 per month or 65% of a pharmacist take home pay. Let me say that again. Between the average student loan debt and a $400,000. home on a 30 year mortgage. Right. I know some people live in higher cost living areas, some people live in lower cost of living areas. That adds up to about $4,500 per month of committed expenses or looking at it another way about 65% of that take home pay number that I just mentioned. That means we have about $2500 left each month for everything else, right all the other home related costs, property taxes, homeowners insurance, upkeep, of course food, clothing, car payments, gas, other debt payments, insurance premiums, additional savings, and not to be forgotten the more enjoyable discretionary expenses like vacation, experiences, eating out, giving, and so forth. So I think it’s safe to say that most pharmacists didn’t spend six to eight plus years training to get into this profession, to work hard to find themselves living paycheck to paycheck. Now, obviously, some pharmacist households have more than one income, so we have to factor that in. But regardless, we can see that the take home pay of a pharmacist only goes so far. And that’s why it’s critical that we shift the mindset that pharmacists make a great income. Yes, it’s a good income, one that is more than $50,000 higher per year than the average household income in the United States. So it’s a good income, objectively speaking. And so it’s a tool and it’s a pretty good one at that. But without a plan, it is going to have significant limits. So shifting your mindset around how much you make, and how far that income will go is the most important thing that you can do for your financial plan. Why? Because everything else will flow from that mindset, how you save, big purchase decisions, how you handle your debt, ideas for growing your income, and so on. So with that in mind, with the plan that we need to have one, right, we need to have some direction to make sure that we’re achieving our long term goals.

Let’s talk to you five steps to developing and automating a budget that works and hopefully is one that you don’t hate. Step number one is we have to do a financial vital check. Alright, before we get into the vision, before we get into the budget, we have to assess where we are at today. And sometimes this is painful. Sometimes this is exciting, right? Depending on the progress that we’ve made thus far. We need to really honestly assess are we on track? Are we ahead? Are we behind? And what does that even mean? And we don’t want to start running forward until we know where we’re at. And we want to find out what path we want to be running on. And a great starting point, certainly not the only place to be but a great starting point for the financial binos check is to really be tracking your net worth on a regular basis. Now, if you’ve been listening to the show, you’ve heard me talk about net worth many times before. Net worth is simply your assets or what you own, minus your liabilities or what you owe. And as I’ve shared often in my journey, paying off $200,000 of student loan debt and coming out of a significant amount of debt really into a period of trying to grow that net worth. This was a significant part of our journey, really shifting that mindset from income to being a tool, right income not being the end all to really being able to move that income to growing assets, paying down liabilities, and therefore growing net worth.

Now Dr. Tom Stanley in the book, The Millionaire Next Door, which if you haven’t read before, I’d highly recommend it. He says that one of the reasons that millionaires are economically successful is that they think differently. One of the reasons that millionaires are economically successful is that they think differently. And part of what he’s talking about here is this concept of income versus net worth . They recognize that income is a tool, but income by itself does not mean financial success. Now, what should be our net worth? Right? That’s an interesting question, what should be our net worth? And of course the answer that is it depends. But Dr. Tom Stanley in the book, The Millionaire Next Door gives us a calculation for expected net worth. And he says that your expected net worth is your age times your gross annual income divided by 10.

For example, if we had a 45 year old pharmacists making $140,000 per year, if we took 45 as their age, we multiplied it by $140,000 of income, we divide that by 10. That’s $630,000 would be their expected net worth for that 45 year old pharmacist making $140,000. Now in addition to net worth, that’s just one calculation. We certainly don’t want to hang our hat on that. There are other areas inside of this financial vitals check that we should be thinking about. Things like, where are we at with the emergency fund? Is that a box you’ve already checked? Is that something we need to focus on? Perhaps you looked at that several years ago, and now we need to update that because expenses have gone up. So where are we at with the emergency fund? That’s one part. Do we have revolving credit card debt? If so, typically, because of where those interest rates are we going to focus on that before we look at other parts of the plan. Have we landed on, for those that have student loans, have we landed on an optimized student loan repayment strategy? Critically important, many different pathways we can go. We know that certain strategies can be more advantageous than others in terms of cash flow, what we pay out of pocket, potentially forgiveness. So have you critically evaluated your loan repayment strategy? Other areas of the financial vitals check are we set with things like own occupation, Long Term Disability Insurance, or for those that need life insurance, we have a good term life insurance policy that’s going to cover the needs that we have, are we on track with retirement savings? Right?

We’ve talked about all these topics on the show before these areas, why it’s important to start here with the financial vitals check is all of these areas are going to potentially impact cash flow, and give us insight into where we want to prioritize and focus with the budget because you’ll see here in a moment, then we talk about how to execute on the budget. One of the things we need to know is what are the goals that we want to include in our budget? What are we focusing on? What are we prioritizing on in doing this vitals check is going to help us in part, identify what those areas are. Now if you want more information on this concept of financial vitals checking, you want to do your own financial vitals check, we have a neat tool available for free. If you go to yourfinancialpharmacist.com/financial-fitness-test. That’s our financial fitness test, again, yourfinancialpharmacist.com/financial-fitness-test that will take you to a quick interactive tool, and it’ll help you identify what some of these areas are to focus on. Again, we’ll link a link to that in the show notes. So that’s step one, doing the financial vital check.

Tim Ulbrich 11:40

Step number two, again, we’re not even in the budget yet, right? Step number two is setting the vision. I firmly believe, we firmly believe, that without a compelling vision, the budget will feel restrictive, right. Without a compelling vision, the budget will feel restrictive. And I can almost guarantee you as well that you will run out of gas at some point in time, if you don’t have a compelling vision, only to find yourself and the whiplash between, in and out of being intentional with your finances. Like we tend to approach other areas of our life, right, such as fitness, such as our diet, and so forth. If we have a compelling vision, think of that as the engine for the financial plan, especially if you are in a season of grinding it out or cutting back, which hopefully is temporary. But especially in those seasons, we want to have a very compelling vision that’s going to drive us forward and keep us motivated. So first things first, what does your rich life look like? What does your, keyword there, your rich life look like? I love this quote quote from Roy Bennett. He says, “Dream your own dreams achieve your own goals. Your journey is your own and unique.” That’s so important here, when we think about setting the vision for living a rich life. When we talk about our financial plan and our goals. It’s so easy to get caught up into what are other people doing or the comparison game. What does it mean for your family to be living a rich life. If we can get clear on that -something we’ve talked about on this show before – that’s gonna help us really have a strong plan when it comes to how we’re not only going to implement the budget, but how we’re also going to be able to achieve other financial goals like long term savings, and retirement. Don’t underestimate this step. Step number two, setting the vision think of this really as the window in which we’re looking through as we’re making any of the individual financial decisions.

Tim Ulbrich 13:44

Alright, step number three, is I want you to track back your spending 90 days. So before we get into the spreadsheets, before we start to set the budget going forward, I want you to track back you’re spending 90 days right? This is the audit of the expenses to identify how have we been spending our money before we set what the goal is going forward. Now, this is really easy to do. Thankfully, in 2024. Many banks, many tools, software options that are out there, that we can quickly pull statements from credit cards, from debit cards, from various accounts, and be able to aggregate these and many of them even automatically will categorize them for you. Sometimes you gotta clean that up. But this is a process that we think is really important before we set the plan going forward. Now 90 days, I believe is an important window of time, because in any given month, right in any 30 day period, we can have some anomalies with the budget that might not be “normal.”, right to the month that we would have throughout the year. And so 90 days is going to help to average that out a little bit. That’s one of the reasons we want to look back 90 days but also by looking back 90 days we’re going to start to identify some patterns of things that we might want to adjust or at least be aware of as we set the budget and plan going forward. So that’s step number three is we’re going to track back 90 days categorize those expenses, really look at what is our spending patterns, what’s the spending behaviors? And there, we’re going to quickly identify what’s the difference between our expenses, and what’s the differences between our take home pay, right, and that’s going to help us identify what we have to work with for the budget.

Tim Ulbrich 15:21

Alright, step number four is then actually setting the budget. Now, this is intentional that we don’t start here, right, I firmly believe from experience from working with many pharmacists on this that if we start with a budget, we tend to lose that momentum that I’ve been talking about. And especially if we have two people that are working on this together, where maybe they’re not on the same page financially, we want to first get clear on the vision, right? If we can have the shared dreams, the shared vision, I’ll never say the budgeting process is easy. But it’s more palatable when we’re working then from that mindset where, okay, now the budget is simply the execution of the vision that we’ve agreed upon. Right. So we don’t want to start here with a budget.

Of course, there are many ways to budget, some of you might be familiar with budgeting methods, such as the 50,30, 20 budget, which is about 50% of your expenses should be for essential, or excuse me, 50% of your income for essential expenses, about 30% of your income for discretionary expenses, those are the things that are the nice to haves, but we could cut them if we needed to cut them, and then about 20%, that’s going to go towards savings or investments. So there’s different models and frameworks of that. But many of you may be aware of something like that. There’s also budgeting methods that are known as like the no budget budget, which simply means that you identify, you know, what are those critical expenses that you have to fund each month, and then you just don’t overspend your income beyond that, right. And so that’s a method that we see people that are a little bit further in their career, that have a more significant rhythm and cadence to what they’ve been doing over a long period of time. They have a good handle on their expenses and their goals and whether or not they’re on track, that might be something that they’re not tracking in such a granular way. Okay, so lots of different ways to budget I’m going to focus though not on the 50-30-20 budget, not on the no budget budget, I’m gonna focus on the zero based budget, because I believe that while this isn’t for everyone, I believe that for many people that are trying to get either on track, let’s say you’re just getting started in your career, and you’re trying to develop a system that makes sure you’re setting yourself up for a good long term plan and that you have a good foundation, I think this is a great way to get started. And then you can pull back over time, or for those listening saying, hey, maybe you need to get back on track, or I’ve kind of lost my way. And I want to have a season of really getting refocused. I think the zero based budget method can be a way to do that.

Now, as a reminder, if you want to download the YFP budget template, so you can work along side as you’re listening, hopefully, you’re not driving as you’re doing this, you can go to yourfinancialpharmacist.com/budget to get that Excel template for free. Okay, so inside of this step of the zero based budget, I’m gonna walk you through five steps of how to complete the zero based budget. Step number one is you have to know your take home pay. Now, as obvious as that sounds, this can be challenging sometimes, right, especially for folks that are just getting started. You know, I see this often from a transition where someone’s going from student to resident or student to fellow and then they’re going into the first job, right? There’s that change that’s happening, or individuals that are going from one income to two incomes in the household, that certainly can be a season of change as well, or for those those seen that variable income. Right? Whether that be you know, side hustle income, additional income, or you don’t work consistent salary types of positions. This can be sometimes challenging, but we have to know on average per month, and for those of you that have variable income, we want to be conservative in this estimate. We have to know on average per month, what is our take home pay, right? This is the amount that you’ll be working with each month to cover your expenses and to put to work to achieve your financial goals. The take home pay or net pay is the amount that shows up on your paycheck, every pay period after taxes after health care insurance premiums that you pay after any retirement contributions and any other deductions that are withdrawn from your base pay or your gross pay. Okay, so for students, any students that are listening, right, this could also potentially include things like student loan disbursement money, plus any earned income that you would have in internships and so forth. So that’s step number one is that we have to determine our take home pay.

Step number two is we then want to account for and subtract our necessary or essential expenses. Now, the definition of necessary can be debated but for the purpose of this activity, let’s include the following as necessary or essential expenses. These would be things like housing, transportation, food, utilities, insurance premiums -if that’s applicable-and any minimum payments on your debts that you need to make. Now in this step, consider your food expense as what you need as an essential right, anything else that would be dining out, we’re going to include in discretionary in step number three in this budgeting exercise. Okay, so that’s step number two is we account for all of our essential or necessary expenses. And we’re working down from our take home pay.

Step number three, then is we’re going to determine how much we spend on discretionary expenses. Think of discretionary expenses as the nice to haves, but in a true financial emergency, they could be cut, if you needed to cut them, right, these would be things like eating out, you know, trips, extra trips, or shopping, extra payments on debt, clothing, expenses, beyond the minimum, you know, housing upgrades, and so forth. Right, it’s very easy to justify any one of these as essential. So it’s important here to be honest with ourselves, when evaluating this category. If you have no idea how much you spend on these types of expenses in a month, a good place to start is to review these from again, as we did earlier, looking back 90 days to review what you’re spending in these areas in various statements and categorize these whether that’s credit card statements, debit card statements, whatever might be the source of those expenses. Now, I want to emphasize here that discretionary expenses are not bad, right in any way, shape, or form. I think sometimes we get to this step, and we start to have some self judgment, and a little bit of questioning, Well, should I be spending money here? Should it be spending money there? Discretionary expenses, and of themselves are not bad, we’re just separating them from essential expenses as we look at this exercise. In fact, they’re an important part a very important part of living the rich life that we want to live, right? Yes, we’ve got to pay down debt. Yes, we have to save and invest for the future. But we also want to enjoy some of these things along the way. So that’s step number three is determining how much to spend on discretionary.

Step number four, then, is calculating what we call disposable income. Remember, we started with take home pay, we subtracted essential expenses, we subtracted discretionary expenses. And now what we’re trying to determine is what is the disposable income. So this is the amount that we calculate by taking, again, the take home pay, subtracting essential and discretionary expenses. This number is the amount that you have to put towards other financial goals, whether that’s building an emergency fund, whether it’s saving for kids college, whether that’s additional retirement savings, down payment on a home, second property, whatever might be the case. So for example, if you have a take home pay of $7,000, you have necessary expenses of $3,000, discretionary expenses of $2,000, you would have leftover $2,000 of disposable income that we can identify and work with and put towards other goals. Now, why this budgeting method, I think works well and hopefully is one that you don’t hate is we are doing this proactively, before we actually earn the income. Right? We’re doing this proactively before we actually earn the income. So, if we can identify in advance what our goals are, and we can identify how much we have to allocate towards those goals, then the next step we’ll talk about is how to actually make sure we distribute them accordingly. All the sudden, we’re thinking in a way that we are pre funding our goals, right really important, rather than waiting to see what’s left over at the end of the month. And that is what we typically see is sure this takes time to get set up. But when we have this system humming, when we see that we have disposable income, or we thought about that to assign to our various goals, and we know that we’re funding those goals, we can really see some feelings of momentum and progress that are taking place. So that’s step number four, calculating your expense, disposable income.

And then step number five is allocating that disposable income to your goals, right. This is where I really feel like the magic happens: allocating your disposable income to your financial goals. And again, we’re doing this proactively before we earn the income, or at least preparing for this. And then once we earn the income, we’re going to allocate accordingly. So if the amount of disposable income, right, in step number four, when we calculated that disposable income, if the amount of that disposable income isn’t enough to meet the goals that you’ve set and the timeframe that is desirable to you, or you find out that you have a deficit here, well, this is where really where the rubber meets the road. We’ve got some work to do. Right, we’ve got two options. We can adjust our goals, I guess three options, we can adjust our goals, we can cut our expenses, or we can try to grow our income and perhaps it might be a combination of those three, but this is really where we shine a light on the reality of where we are at and so often with the financial plan. The stress comes from living in the dark, right wondering, I hope, I wish, I dream are we going to be able to do this? And we’re going to be able to do that? Really, this system is telling us where are we at? And what are the areas that we want to focus on? And what are the dollars that we have available to do that if we can’t meet those two things? What adjustments do we need to make? Do we need to adjust our goals? Do we need to cut our expenses or, and or are their options to grow our income? Now, the reason why this is called a zero based budget is because at the end of step number five, where we’re allocating our disposable income to our goals, we should have “spent”, “spent” because we’re doing this proactively, our entire income, meaning that every dollar has been assigned, and we have a $0 balance remaining, right, because we’ve allocated every dollar to essential expenses, discretionary expenses, and then ultimately, to the goals that we’ve determined are most important.

Alright, so those are the five steps of creating the zero based budget. Now, if we zoom back out, remember, where did we start? We started with doing a financial vitals check. Where are we at today? What what is our net worth position? What are the areas of the financial plan that we want to focus on? We then talked about setting the vision, right? What does it mean, for us? Our unique plan and vision for living a rich life? How are we spending our money? How are we spending our time? We then talked about tracking back 90 days, so we can get an idea of what our spending is in various categories of the budget on average each month. And then we talked about setting the budget, right. And that was the five steps I just reviewed with a zero base budget.

Tim Ulbrich 26:31

Now the final step of all this part number five years really tracking and automating this system. Now how you choose to track this really doesn’t matter to me, at the end of the day, it’s the system that works best for you. And is the system that is feasible for you to keep going, at least for the foreseeable future. So when I asked a group of pharmacists, hey, what system do you use to track? You know, some people use some of the fancy softwares and tools that are out there, such as YNAB, or Every Dollar, just a couple examples, some use a tool that’s provided to them through their bank or the credit card that they use. Most people I would say, use probably a Google spreadsheet or some type of Excel template. So how you track it to me, doesn’t necessarily matter. But the second part of this final step, right, I mentioned, track and automate. Track and automate when it comes to automating your financial plan. It is so obvious, so effective, so easy to implement, but so many people aren’t optimizing this.

Think of automation as the mechanism by which you’re going to put your budget that we just said, we’re going to put this to work for us each and every month, because we’ve already done the hard work to proactively define what are our goals? And how are we going to prioritize and fund those goals. Now, I cover this in detail at length in Episode 341, where I talked about five financial moves to make in 2024, I talked about the concept of automation, I talked about exactly what the system looks like for Jess and I and our own financial plan. So make sure to go back and listen to that and how you can begin to implement automation as a part of your financial plan. Alright, so there you have it. Five steps that you can use to implement a budgeting system and process that not only hope, hopefully helps you achieve your financial goals. But I also hope makes this topic just a little bit more palatable. So we talked about the importance of doing that financial vital check, setting the vision, tracking back 90 days, setting the budget, and then developing a process to track and automate that along the way.

Alright, as we wrap up today, an important reminder about our webinar coming up on March 7 at 8:30pm/Eastern, Budgeting Blueprint, What Zero-Based Budgeting Is, Why It Works, and How to Start One. I’m really excited to walk you through in a visual manner how you can implement your own zero based budget as well as to anonymously feature other real pharmacists’ budgets for you to see. So to get started, you can register for the webinar for free again, you visit yourfinancialpharmacist.com/budgetwebinar again that yourfinancialpharmacist.com/budgetwebinar to save your seat. We’re gonna be giving away three $50 Amazon gift cards of pharmacists who submit their budget to be featured and who attend the webinar live. So as a reminder to have your template, your budget template featured, you can download that free zero based budget template yourfinancialpharmacist.com/budget, fill it out with your own numbers, send it back to us attach it [email protected], in the subject line make sure you note budget and then if you have any questions in your own budget template you want me to address during the webinar make sure to include those in the email as well. Alright, thanks so much for listening to this week’s episode of the YFP Podcast. We’ll catch you again next week. Take care.

Tim Ulbrich 29:51

As we conclude this week’s podcast and important reminder that the content on this show is provided to you for informational purposes only and is not intended 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 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 Pharmacists Podcast. Have a great rest of your week.

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YFP 345: 7 Personal Finance Books to Read in 2024 with Tim Ulbrich

Posted on February 8, 2024February 7, 2024 by YFP Media

Tim Ulbrich reviews seven impactful finance books he recommends for both seasoned investors and beginners to gain strategies and inspiration for success.

Episode Summary

In this episode, Tim Ulbrich continues the discussion from Episode 341 on “5 Financial Moves to Make in 2024.” The fifth “move” was about “setting a plan for your personal finance learning,” and this week, Tim dives into seven personal finance books that have profoundly influenced his financial journey.

With no particular order in mind, Tim shares insights from each book and how he has implemented key takeaways into his own financial plan. You can find links to all these recommended books in the show notes. Tim emphasizes that these are not just any books – they are ones he frequently recommends or gifts to others, and they have played a crucial role in his and his wife, Jess’, journey towards achieving financial freedom.

Whether you’re a seasoned investor or just starting on your financial journey, these books are a must-read (or re-read) in 2024. Tune in for valuable insights and inspiration to help you pave your way to financial success!

About Today’s Guest

Key Points from the Episode

Personal finance books and their impact on achieving financial goals. [0:00]
Balancing saving and spending for a rich life. [5:30]
Wealth-building books and their impact on financial planning. [9:30]
Building wealth through calculated risks and long-term investments. [14:09]
Personal finance books and their impact on the Tim’sjourney. [18:03]

Episode Highlights

“When it comes to personal finance, I believe strongly that there is no “arrived” with the financial plan. A commitment to ongoing learning and having the humility to understand that there is much to learn on this topic and mistakes are inevitable is key to long term success.” – Tim Ulbrich [01:49]

“Money is a tool that if we are planning appropriately, we can facilitate and direct to those areas that have the most significance.” – Tim Ulbrich [04:04]

“That’s why as we say, often, a good financial plan should take care of your future self, but also allow you to live a rich life today.” – Tim Ulbrich [07:13]

“Money is something that affords us the opportunity to pay for our basic needs and, if we’re able, to live our rich life and to give to others. And next time you hold a bill of any value in your hand, remind yourself that it’s a piece of paper. In fact, it’s a piece of paper that I recently learned is 25%, linen, 75% cotton. But this is a piece of paper that has value because, number one, we all agree that it has value. And number two, it’s backed by the faith and credit of the US government. So what’s my point? My point is that it’s finite, right. And if we’re not careful, we can miss the boat on accruing while losing sight of the so-what.” – Tim Ulbrich [20:00]

Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode

Episode Transcript

Tim Ulbrich 00:00

Hey everybody, Tim Ulbrich here and thank you for listening to the YFP Podcast where each week we strive to inspire and encourage you on your path towards achieving financial freedom. This week, I’m covering seven personal finance books that have been integral in my own journey that I think you should read or perhaps reread in 2024. My criteria for a book to make this list includes one that I frequently recommend or gift to others, and that I have implemented one or more things from the book of my own financial plan that has had a significant impact for Jess and I achieving our financial goals. Before we jump into the show and my list of seven personal finance books to read in 2024, I recognize that many listeners may not be aware of what our team at YFP Planning does and working one on one with pharmacists all across the country. YFP Planning offers fee-only high-touch financial planning and wealth management services for pharmacists at all stages of their careers. If you’re interested in learning more about how working one on one with a certified financial planner can help you achieve your financial goals. You can book a free discovery call at YFPplanning.com. Whether or not YFP Planning financial planning services are a good fit for you, know that we appreciate your support of this podcast and our mission to help pharmacists achieve financial freedom.

Tim Ulbrich 01:17

Hey, everyone, welcome to this week’s episode! Tim Ulbrich here and I’m excited to talk through seven personal finance books that I think you should read or perhaps reread in 2024. For now, we kicked off the new year with Episode 341, where I cover the five financial moves to make to crush your 2024 goals. And we’ll link to that episode in the show notes. One of those moves was to set your learning plan. To have an intentional plan and effort to up your financial IQ and your financial knowledge. And when it comes to personal finance, I believe strongly that there is no “arrived” with the financial plan. A commitment to ongoing learning and having the humility to understand that there is much to learn on this topic and mistakes are inevitable is key to long term success. Now one of the greatest advantages that we have living in the 21st century is that we have access to learn just about anything that we want, often at low or no cost. Right. Thank you very much to the Public Library system. So here are seven financial books that have had a profound impact on my journey, such that I often recommend these books to others, gift them and I’ve implemented at least one often more than one of the teachings in my own financial plan.

All right, in no particular order. Let’s jump in with book number one, which is I Will Teach You To Be Rich by Ramit Sethi. Now I had the chance to hear Ramit meet speak in 2019 at the FinCon event the Fin Con Conference in Washington DC and it was fire. He’s a fantastic speaker, a fantastic teacher. And at the time, the theme of his talk, which he talks about the book I Will Teach You To Be Rich, is money dials. Money dials, a key concept in that book. And really the concept of money dials is identifying what areas of spending have the most significance, meaning or impact for you, and dialing those up. And on the flip side, finding those areas of spending that perhaps are somewhat automatic, and we may not even be thinking a whole lot about it. And they have the least significance, or meaning or impact and dialing those down. Right? It’s about intentional allocation of the dollars that we have and spending them in areas that we derive the most significance. Now it sounds obvious, but it’s easy to fall into the trap of spending money on things that you don’t really care that much about at the expense of not having money to spend on things that mean the most to you. And I love that he starts off the book with this, right? Because before we implement the X’s and O’s of the financial plan that you’ve heard me say on this podcast many times, we have to be clear on what does it mean to live a rich life.

Now he uses the terminology money dials, we talked about living a rich life, we’re talking about the same thing, right? Money is a tool that if we are planning appropriately, we can facilitate and direct to those areas that have the most significance. Now in fact, as a society, I would argue that we do this all the time, the literature shows us that experiences and giving derive the most significance in terms of the connection between happiness and money- hold that thought I’m gonna come back to that in one of the other books that I mentioned in this list of seven. Yet those two things often fall towards the bottom of the list as we give preference to less meaningful things. Now this is not about me saying what should or shouldn’t be meaningful, right? Everyone has different significance and meaning it’s about getting clear on what are those things that you derive the greatest significance and meaning from and is your financial plan is your spending in alignment with those areas?

Now, in addition to the concept of money downs in this book, his teachings on automation have stayed with me and are ones I’ve applied in my own plan and teach, often to other pharmacists. Now he says in the book that automating your money will be the single most profitable system that you’ll ever build. And I would whole heartedly agree with that. It takes time, a little bit of time to set up a perhaps not as much as you think. But once you have a system in place, where you’ve thought about and identified your goals, we’ve accounted for them inside of the monthly spending plan. And then we are automatically funding those goals. And we see that process happening. Boom, right? That’s when we’re really humming with the financial plan. In general, this book is a great personal Finance 101 read, it’s an easy read. Again, he’s a fantastic teacher. And I love the principles in this book and are principles that I often apply in my own financial plan. So first book on our list, I Will Teach You To Be Rich by Ramit Sethi.

The second book on my list is Die with Zero by Bill Perkins. Die with Zero by Bill Perkins. Now, this book is all about perspective, and was one of my favorite reads, if not my favorite read of 2023. This book is going to challenge you to think differently about the value of spending and finding that balance with saving or as we say, at YFP finding the balance between living a rich life today, and planning and taking care of our future selves. Now, if you’re an aggressive saver, guilty as charged, right, and you find yourself challenged to enjoy spending money today, right to let go the reins a little bit, this is a must read for you. Bill Perkins, in the book challenges traditionally held beliefs about retirement planning, and passing down generational wealth.

One of my favorite quotes from the book is when he says quote, “People who save tend to save too much for too late in their lives, they are depriving themselves now just to care for a much, much older future self, a future self that may never live long enough to enjoy the money.” Nothing in the future is guaranteed. Yet we should plan for our future selves. Both are true, right, we have to strike this balance. And that’s why as we say, often, a good financial plan should take care of your future self, but also allow you to live a rich life today. And if you’re feeling that tension, I think you’re gonna find a lot of value in this book.

Through Bill’s teaching, I’ve come to appreciate and still need a lot of help guidance and reminders from my financial planner, from Jess in our own plan, that spending just like saving is a learned habit. I was recently reminded of this after listening to an interview on Ramit Sethi’s podcast, where he was talking with a couple nearing retirement age that had over $6 million in net worth. It was quite sad to hear the husband rationalize with Ramit for almost two hours, all the reasons why he couldn’t spend and enjoy because he had to, quote, “first save it up” or quote, “work harder” to make up for what he was going to spend. Again, net worth of $6 million. So for all intents and purposes, they achieved their savings goals plus some, right? The plan had worked. They had gotten to that point that they were planning for all along. But despite what the numbers showed, he couldn’t shift his mindset. He was stuck in the grind and the hustle of working and saving, working and saving. And this is something we don’t talk about often enough with a financial plan that when we work hard for 30 or 40 years to save, that is a big transition. When we get to the withdrawal phase, right? We need to be planning for that. We need to be preparing for that. And we need training wheels along the way to help us with this learned behavior of spending. And the point that Ramit was trying to make and trying to get this husband to see is that in order to live a rich life, the plan that got them there can’t be the same as the plan going forward. Right, the plan that got them there to work hard to save, save, save, work hard, save, save, save, that mindset was going to require a shift in order to live a rich life. New behaviors need to be learned. And ideally, we can build these spending muscles throughout our careers and not just wait until some day off in the future that may or may not come and may or may not be what we have in mind. So my challenge for you is I highlight this book Die With Zero here by Bill Perkins not only to read the book, but my challenge to you is does your financial plan include a balance of saving for your future self and living a rich life today?

Number three in the book is Rich Dad, Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki. Rich Dad, Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki. Now, Robert Kiyosaki has recently come into the spotlight and many different controversial ways. So personality aside, his teachings in this book, in my opinion, remain a classic. This book is all about mindset, not X’s and O’s. Like some of the other books that are on the list today. And if you think of the financial plan as a series of decisions that need to be made, I think of this book as being a philosophy that guides those decisions, it’s the thread behind the decisions that we make. Now, some key takeaways from this book that have stayed with me for several years, I think I first read it about seven or eight years ago, maybe even longer. I’ve read it a second, maybe a third time at this point. And it’s one of those books I’d like to come back to every so often. And a few of the things that have stayed with me is that, you know, what we might think is an asset versus a liability. I think he challenges that mindset. Why the leverage is an important tool to build wealth. And of course, there’s risk with leverage. And we have to balance that. Also, what has stayed with me is why traditional W2 income limits wealth building. Traditional W2 income has limits as it relates to wealth building. And finally, why business ownership and real estate investing are key legs of wealth building. So he makes a strong argument that much of the tax code is really written in favor of those that own a small business and those that own real estate. Now, that’s not to suggest that those pathways are for everyone, by any means. But it really highlights to me the philosophy in which we might be thinking about building wealth.

Now, this book in particular, along with Tax Free Wealth, by Tom Wheelwright, and we’ll link to all these books in the show notes, Tax Free Wealth by Tom Wheelwright really opened my eyes to the importance of tax as a part of the financial plan, one that is kind of always behind the scenes that probably many of us are not thinking about. And more specifically, the strategies that can be employed to optimize our tax situation, right? We want to pay our fair share, but we want to pay no more. And I think through these teachings, and really digging into the form 1040 and understanding how the different components of that form work and what are the levers that we can pull to make our tax rate as efficient as possible. These two resources: Rich Dad, Poor Dad and Tax Free Wealth have really been instrumental in opening my eyes to the significance and importance of tax as a part of the financial plan.

Our number four on my list is The Millionaire Next Door by Dr. Tom Stanley. The Millionaire Next Door by Dr. Tom Stanley, and the updated version, The Next Millionaire Next Door, featuring Tom’s daughter, Dr. Sarah Stanley Fallaw which we had the pleasure of having on the podcast on episode number 200. This book examines the key behavioral traits of millionaires. One of my favorite quotes in the book is when he says, quote, “One of the reasons that millionaires are economically successful is that they think differently.” They think differently. What he’s talking about is one of my key takeaways from that book is that net worth, not income, net worth, which is your assets, what you own minus your liabilities, that really is a true indicator of your overall financial health. Net worth, not income, as the financial vitals check, is really going to help us as we think about this mindset of is our income being translated into building our assets, and paying down our debt.

Some of my other key takeaways from this book is that, you know, we often wouldn’t know who the people are that are millionaires or multimillionaires. When you look at the research that’s presented in The Millionaire Next Door, as well as the updated version and The Next Millionaire Next Door, the spending behaviors and patterns would say that they probably aren’t the people that we think are millionaires that more or portray to be millionaires. They often have a frugal mindset, doesn’t mean that they’re cheap doesn’t mean that they don’t like investing in good experiences, doesn’t mean that they’re not philanthropic or givers. But they often have a frugal mindset. They’re typically not trapped, millionaires are not trapped by what I think of as the big rocks, right? They’re not house poor, they’re not car poor. They do take calculated risks, often in business or real estate. And most millionaires, as the research suggests, in that book are self made. It’s not typically inherited money. Fascinating research and concepts. I would highly recommend The Millionaire Next Door or the updated version, if you haven’t already read it.

Alright, number five on my list is the Compound Effect by Darren Hardy. The Compound Effect by Darren Hardy. It was one of those books, it’s a quick read. It was one of those books, I remember exactly where I was when I read it. At our old house up in Northeast Ohio during the summer, I read it outside in couple hours, I couldn’t put it down. And one of those books, you’re just constantly highlighting taking notes. You’re like “Yes, yes, yes!” And this is not exclusively a personal finance book, but I love the applications here. And I was recently reflecting on those in my life that have been financially successful because I think it’s helpful to learn and grow from those who have actually done it. Right. And as people came to mind that I thought, okay, who has been long term financially successful in building wealth? Not short term success, long term, financially successful? And as I thought more about that as like, I can’t think of anyone I know who got rich off of buying whole life insurance policies, buying and altcoins are buying NFT’s. And I’m not saying that people don’t exist that have built wealth in those ways. Rather, what I’m saying is that I don’t know anyone that took this path. And I feel confident in saying the perception is much greater than the reality when it comes to these types of vehicles being a viable path to building wealth. Right? Often these are short term solutions that are bandaids when we really need to look at long term consistent behaviors.

Rather, when I think of those people that have built long term wealth, it was a long, methodical, patient journey. One intentional step after another where those decisions, and good decisions not to say there weren’t mistakes along the way, but those good decisions compounded over a long period of time. And I think, unfortunately, we’re hearing less of these journeys, right, because these aren’t great clickbait, these aren’t great in terms of social media algorithms. They’re often boring stories in the literature really supports that in the book, The Millionaire Next Door, which I just mentioned previously. And several, when I thought more about who are these people, several not all have multiple pathways of building wealth. Typically, it’s traditional investments, it might be equity in a business, it might be real estate, and those are always in balance. But I’ve noticed that as a theme, and those that have been really long term, successful in building wealth, and often being philanthropic, as a part of that wealth building. These individuals that come to mind are taking calculated risks on opportunities, where they see that the upside dramatically outweighs the downside. And they have a strong financial foundation in place such that if that calculated risk doesn’t work, they’re not going to be impacted in a significant or catastrophic way. Right, they’re able to take that calculated risk, because they have that strong base and foundation in place.

As I think of these people that come to mind, I would describe them as overall fairly conservative, yet willing, again, to take some level of risk if an opportunity presents itself. So they’re not risk averse, but they’re also not flashing. In fact, they’re quite humble. And they’re often very philanthropic. And they really do embody some of the teachings that have stayed with me from this book, The Compound Effect by Darren Hardy. He has a formula in this book that I often reference back to and that formula is small smart choices, plus consistency plus time equals radical difference. Small smart choices, plus consistency plus time equals radical difference. That is the definition of compound interest when we think about saving over a long period of time. So this is the path I will follow. This is the one that I have seen work – a path defined by working hard, taking calculated risk, investing in tax efficient, appreciating assets, building equity that can be converted to other assets, developing a habit and priority for giving and doing this over and over over a long period of time to allow those results to compound.

Our number six on my list is Total Money Makeover by Dave Ramsey. The Total Money Makeover by Dave Ramsey. Now, I’m not an avid follower of Dave Ramsey and his principles and the baby steps but I have to give credit where credit is due. Reading the Total Money Makeover going through Financial Peace University listening to Dave Ramsey’s podcast, was really like a wake up call over a decade ago that inspired the journey that Jess and I took to ultimately pay off our $200,000 of student loan debt, and really led to is the really beginning steps of the place that we are today the journey that we would take to get there. That book, The Total Money Makeover, listening to the podcast really lit a fire under me to want to learn more, right, as I mentioned, was kind of a wake up call to create our own path, our own plan. Even if we didn’t follow the path and plan that he prescribes to so many through the baby step formula. The baby steps, I will admit early in our journey, it was a grounding framework. A grounding framework for us that we needed at the time, as we were trying to balance many things. We weren’t doing any of them particularly well. And we didn’t have an intentional plan in place. And that really was the footing that we needed to get started that would ultimately allow us to build momentum, to build our emergency savings, to get out of debt, and then to have a prioritized approach to achieving our goals. So that’s number six, a Total Money Makeover by Dave Ramsey.

Number seven, last on my list is Happy Money, The Science of Happier Spending by Elizabeth Dunn and Michael Norton. Now, I would assume many of you have heard of all, perhaps, the first six books that I mentioned, but maybe not the case with this one. I ran across this several years ago. And I intentionally book ended my list of seven here with this one in particular because I think that it’s an important reminder that money is a tool, right? I mentioned that when I talked about Die With Zero by Bill Perkins. Money is something that affords us the opportunity to pay for our basic needs and, if we’re able, to live our rich life and to give to others. And next time you hold a bill of any value in your hand, remind yourself that it’s a piece of paper. In fact, it’s a piece of paper that I recently learned is 25%, linen, 75% cotton. But this is a piece of paper that has value because, number one, we all agree that it has value. And number two, it’s backed by the faith and credit of the US government. So what’s my point? My point is that it’s finite, right. And if we’re not careful, we can miss the boat on accruing while losing sight of the so-what. And that reminder comes I think strongly in the book, Happy Money, The Science of Happier Spending, by Elizabeth Dunn and Michael Norton.

This book provides what the research has to say, on the science of spending and the connection between money and happiness. Now, happiness,how do you define that, right? That’s an important component to consider. But my takeaways from this book were that the literature supports, to no surprise, but an important reminder, the link between happiness and money typically lies in two main areas. Number one, spending money on experiences and memories that will come from those. And number two, on giving. When you look at the connection between happy and money, this, it strongly points to giving and experiences as an important part of the financial plan. I think if you talk to anyone who’s been at this for a while, you start to see this come out again, especially as they shore up some of the basis of their financial plan. These are the areas that you typically see people light up when they talk about their financial plan. Alright, so there you have it, short and sweet, seven personal finance books that have had a profound impact on my journey and are books that I would recommend you read or reread in 2024. We’ll link to all of these books in the show note.

And if you have a book that you often recommend, or that has had a profound impact on your journey, I want to hear about it! Shoot me an email at info@your financialpharmacist.com Let me know what I left off the list. I’d love to read it and perhaps share it with our community in the future. Again, you can reach us at [email protected].

Now we all know that learning right reading books, listening to podcasts, learning is one thing, but learning and taking action with accountability is really where we start to see things happen. And that’s why we’re so excited about the work that our team at YFP Planning is doing through our fee-only, certified financial planning service. You want to learn more about what it looks like to work one-on-one with a fee only certified financial planner from Your Financial Pharmacist, yes to learn and grow in your financial IQ and knowledge, but also to take steps and implement those in your financial plan and be held accountable to achieve those results. You can book a free discovery call at YFPPlanning.com. Again, that’s YFPPlanning.com. Thanks so much for joining me on this week’s episode. And we’ll be back next week. Have a great rest of your day.

[DISCLAIMER]

As we conclude this week’s podcast and important reminder that the content on this show is provided to you for informational purposes only and is not intended 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 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 Pharmacists Podcast. Have a great rest of your week.

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YFP 344: Beyond the ER: The Entrepreneurial Journey of Dr. Jimmy Pruitt

Posted on February 1, 2024February 1, 2024 by YFP Media

Jimmy Pruitt, PharmD, Founder & CEO of Pharmacy & Acute Care University, shares insights on his entrepreneurial journey and the EMPower Rx Conference.

Episode Summary

In this week’s episode, join us as we sit down with Dr. Jimmy Pruitt, a Clinical Pharmacy Specialist in Emergency Medicine at Atrium Health. Dr. Pruitt wears multiple hats as the Founder & CEO of Pharmacy & Acute Care University and the brains behind the EMPowerRx Conference. Our conversation delves into his fascinating entrepreneurial journey, exploring the roots of why and how he embarked on this path.

Throughout the episode, we gain valuable perspectives on the intricacies of balancing professional commitments and entrepreneurial endeavors. Dr. Pruitt shares his experiences, lessons learned, and the strategies he employed to overcome obstacles on his journey. Dr. Pruitt also shares his vision for the EMRower Rx Conference – a unique conference and continuing education experience for professionals in emergency medicine pharmacotherapy.

Tune in to this insightful conversation with Dr. Jimmy Pruitt to glean wisdom from his unique blend of clinical expertise and entrepreneurial spirit. Whether you’re navigating the realms of healthcare, entrepreneurship, or both, this episode offers valuable insights and inspiration for the road ahead.

About Today’s Guests

Dr. Jimmy Pruitt is originally from Orlando, FL, and is a combination of nerd and gym junky having a background as a division 1 cornerback then turned Doctor of Pharmacy from Presbyterian College School of Pharmacy in 2017. He completed a PGY-1 Pharmacy Residency at Florida Hospital Orlando, and then went on to Grady Health System in Atlanta GA for his PGY2 Emergency Medicine Residency. Dr. Pruitt is currently an Emergency Medicine Clinical Pharmacy Specialist at the Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston, SC.

Dr. Pruitt was honored with the Excellence in Diversity from MUSC College of Pharmacy, Presbyterian College School of Pharmacy (PCSP) Alumni of the Year, and keynote speaker for the 2021 PCPS graduation. Dr. Pruitt’s professional interests include cardiac arrest, shock syndromes, trauma, and hosting the #1 Emergency Medicine Pharmacy Podcast “Pharm So Hard” and operation his new pharmacy academy called Pharmacy & Acute Care University.

Key Points from the Episode

Entrepreneurship and pharmacy with Dr. Jimmy. [0:00]
Entrepreneurship, pharmacy, and education with Jimmy Pruitt. [1:37]
Validating a gap in the market for pharmacist-created acute care content. [6:21]
Overcoming fear and taking the first step in starting a podcast. [12:01]
Balancing full-time work and business as a creator. [16:10]
Growing a team and delegating tasks. [22:53]
Business growth and vision for a pharmacy education company. [29:02]
Emergency medicine pharmacotherapy conference. [34:56]
Emergency medicine and pharmacotherapy conference. [39:25]

Episode Highlights

“The biggest thing that people say is like sometimes you have to just jump and you just have to do all these different things. And I’m like, I have a family, one. So that really kind of changes the dynamic. It’s not just me making this big shift, but I want to make sure that I was able to consistently get that number.” – Jimmy Pruitt [18:37]

“But I’ve noticed as I continue doing both of this, me being a business owner and being very focused as being the president, CEO, whatever the title you want to give yourself when you’re when you’re starting out, it actually made me a better employee.” – Jimmy Pruitt [19:09]

“So as I looked at the component of making sure I’m meeting that output, that I need to be able to consider stepping back, I also realized there was so much more value, because now I’m able to understand other people’s problems.” – Jimmy Pruitt [20:29]

“But learning more at the job and understanding the problems that they have, and other people like them have, has made me be able to understand the market, and how I can potentially use that in the future. But more importantly, my skills as a business owner, has allowed me to be able to solve problems that early in my career, and earlier, you know, in places I’ve been people don’t necessarily think about.” – Jimmy Pruitt [21:58]

“I think when looking at growing a team and really get into that first step of, I want to bring someone else into this, especially when you’re talking full time employment. The very first employee that I hired a couple of years back was just my virtual assistant. And one of the first aspects I realized was a very big challenge of mine was, how do I explain what’s in my head that I do every day?” -JImmy Pruitt [25:03]

“The big thing that I believe that I’m trying to accomplish over again, this next five to seven years is to make this to where we have one unified goal and mission we’re trying to do: provide high quality education related to pharmacotherapy.” – Jimmy Pruitt [31:20]

“I want to provide a home for those individuals and I want I want them to be able to have a home, whether they’re gonna be the consumer, or the producer.” – Jimmy Pruitt [32:42]

“And we want to figure out, how can we do it as for us and by us, instead of someone else creating it and thinking they know what we want. Why don’t we just create it from the ground up?” – Jimmy Pruitt [38:01]

Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode

EMPowerRx Conference 2024 (use code YFP2024 for 15% off registration)
YFP Episode 284
Start by Jon Acuff
Procrastinate on Purpose by Rory Vaden
Your Financial Pharmacist
Your Financial Pharmacist on Facebook
Your Financial Pharmacist on Instagram
Tim Ulbrich on LinkedIn
Jimmy Pruitt on LinkedIn
YFP Disclaimer
YFP Newsletter
Pharm So Hard Podcast

Episode Transcript

Tim Ulbrich 00:00

Hey everybody, Tim Ulbrich here and thank you for listening to the YFP Podcast where each week we strive to inspire and encourage you on your path towards achieving financial freedom. This week I welcome Dr. Jimmy Pruitt, a clinical pharmacy specialist in emergency medicine at Atrium Health, Founder and CEO of Pharmacy and Acute Care University and Founder and CEO of the Empower RX Conference. We discuss his entrepreneurial journey, including how and why he got started, why he has maintained full-time employment, challenges going from creator to solopreneur, to building a team and the vision for the business over the next five to 10 years. I’m excited to announce our partnership with the 2024 Empower RX conference, a leading event in emergency medicine pharmacotherapy. This year it’s happening in Charlotte, North Carolina on April 26-April 27. I’ll be there and hope to see you there as well. It’s ideal for pharmacists, physicians, PAs, nurses and others in the field. Empower RX offers more than 10 CPE credits, insights from top experts, interactive workshops and groundbreaking research. It’s not just a conference, it’s a community focused experience, fostering learning and networking in a welcoming environment. Take advantage of discounted registration available to the YFP community by using code YFP2024 for 15% off. Again, that’s code YFP2024 or 15%. You can join in person or virtually registered now at EmpowerRX-conference.com and elevate your emergency medicine skills. Again, that’s EmpowerRX-conference.com.

Tim Ulbrich 01:35

Jimmy, welcome back to the show.

Jimmy Pruitt 01:37

Hey, thanks for having me on again. And it’s been great.

Tim Ulbrich 01:40

So our listeners might remember you back from Episode 284, where we discussed your experiences monetizing your clinical expertise, we’ll link to that episode in the show notes so that folks can dig a little bit deeper. We’ll have some crossover here as well to bring people up to speed. But we certainly did a deeper dive in that episode. And Jimmy, for those that didn’t catch that episode and aren’t already familiar with you and your work, give us a brief introduction to your background and pharmacy and the work that you’re doing now with Atrium Health, as well as being the Founder and CEO of Pharmacy and Acute Care University and the Founder and CEO of the Empower RX Conference.

Jimmy Pruitt 02:14

Thank you. And that’s a mouthful for a lot of you guys. But again, I’m Jim Pruitt. Again, I’m by training at clinical pharmacy specialist at Atrium Health here in Charlotte, a Level One Trauma center, academic, Medical Center, all those great things. And then, in my spare time or lack lack thereof, I like to start off as being a content creator with this pharmacy PEARLS and just having different things that I can give my providers, then that really led to something else led to a podcast called Pharm So Hard. And once that happened, it was really the genesis of something special, I believe. It led to an audience of 1000s of people who didn’t know how to interest in acute care pharmacotherapy, and then from there trying to figure out how to solve the problems that they had. So that led to the next thing, the next thing being after 100. And so episodes Pharm So Hard led to Pharmacy and Acute Care University. And all that really is it just an academy that helps people, pharmacists in particular, with continuing education, but more particularly going to be for board certification prep. So whether you’re studying for your BCPS, or our most popular product that be CMP, your emergency medicine pharmacotherapy, or certification. That is where I spend a lot of my time- question banks, practice exams. And is making a lot of the content that goes along with that. And it’s just been phenomenal to see that growth. And what that led to is people saying, oh, man, I wish I had a place to go to talk about these things versus just studying for it, which led to the Empower RX Conference. So I think, long story short, I am an educator that started to understand the business a little bit more and continuing to learn what business is, and really is focused on how can I not just bring myself along, but how can I bring other people with me to understand the business side of things and monetize their expertise and content?

Tim Ulbrich 04:08

We’re gonna talk a lot about that on this episode, Jimmy, I want to pick your brain have you know, you started with with an idea identified a problem that needed to be solved starting to solve that problem, which opened up more doors built community in this niche, which is really exciting. And now as you enter this growth phase, you know, there’s exciting opportunities and challenges with, Hey, how does this grow beyond the hours that you have in the day? Right? And what what what challenges may that bring? I want to first ask you that I was I was stalking you on LinkedIn and noticed in your headline, you have four different words creator, connector, educator, and pharmacist. Do one of those resonate more with you than the others and why?

Jimmy Pruitt 04:49

I think that is that’s a very, that’s a great question for one, but I think it it depends, like a good lawyer would say it depends. It depends on what I’m doing. And I think as I look at the different platforms that I’m currently in, I tend to be on one side more than other depending on that particular project. So I like to say, the biggest thing is like, I can be a connector, because again, most of everything I’m doing is usually not just myself, I’m usually bringing different people on whether that’s going to be at work. And I’m working with a provider, and a nurse is having a concern about something, I’m connecting those two and that problem and trying to also provide a solution. The same thing for when I’m in my pacu, where my pack you have, well, a potential customer has a problem. They want to be board certified, and I’m trying to connect them with the best highest quality information that helps them get to their end goal. And my conference, prospective people want a place to come. So I’m literally physically now connecting them with other people throughout the world in emergency medicine, pharmacotherapy. So I think connectors the the one thing I can say, but realistically, I have to be all of those other things, to be able to be a good connector. I have to be a great pharmacist, I have to be entrepreneur to make these things happen consistently. And I have to be kind of a creator to be able to have that audience to begin with. So I think connectors the one word, but I think depending on what hat I’m wearing, is really just depends on that location.

Tim Ulbrich 06:21

Well, we say it depends on this podcast often. So that is that is welcome. But I appreciate what you’re what you’re sharing there. I want I want to dig deeper in a few areas that I see come up often with aspiring entrepreneurs and side hustlers that I talk with. And you know, one of the first things is really what was the beginning? Like, right, so the genesis of starting the side hustle that’s turned into a business, obviously, you have many, many different activities that you’re doing within that business. You know, tell us a little bit more about the problem that you are trying to solve and how you identify there is a gap and a need in the market. And I know you shared that briefly already. But you know, a natural question might be well, like Jimmy, aren’t these pharmacists already part of other organizations or, you know, cohorts where they’re able to gather other societies and so forth. So what stood out to you as an opportunity in the market that wasn’t already being served that you said, Hey, not only am I a part of this community, but I feel like my peers, my colleagues could also, you know, come together and we can provide value?

Jimmy Pruitt 07:22

Absolutely. So I think one of the things we look at, and I think the very first problem I wanted to solve was providing high quality education in the acute care space. So if we look, one of the things that is very common is that from a oncology standpoint, from a transplant, those medications that are branded still they have a lot of great continuing education out there. Because again, there’s grants, there’s different incentives for companies to make that content. And a lot of those get heavily represented. But from an acute care standpoint, a lot of things from a pharmacotherapy perspective was not necessarily being created by pharmacists. And emergency medicine in the pharmacy space is my first you know, love within this, but I realized that emergency medicine has everything is critical care is ambulatory care is all these other spaces. So I realized that there wasn’t pharmacist created content that was detailed, that was detailed, but also a concise so that we can see it and be actionable. And that was the aftermath of creating the pharmacy Frothy Pearls series that I created when I was a PGY2 resident at Grady. Once that kind of became the first thing I was like, Okay, well, the problem trying to solve is providing high quality education, from a pharmacist perspective in the acute care space, that is highly assessable. That was kind of a next branch with the audience that I was able to generate from from farm so hard, I realized that, hey, I’m already providing education, but I didn’t necessarily consider it to be very different and very unique. But then the audience would tell me these things. And after you start to look, you kind of change your perspective on how you’re looking at your interactions with people want to online, you realize, hey, I have a model here, from a business perspective that I can sustain because most of it, you know, I would love to direct you away for free every day. But it’s not sustainable. Yeah. And that was kind of the first component of finding pharmacist-created acute care, physical therapy information that was concise, but also provide them continuing education as well.

Tim Ulbrich 09:25

My next question was around validation. And how do you validate that that gap truly exists? You know, one of the traps, especially early on in a business as a hey, I’ve got a great idea. I’m gonna kind of run hard and then you realize, oh, wait a minute, like the problem that I thought needed to be solved. Either I’m in misalignment or maybe it’s not as big of a problem as I thought, you know, others may think and so you partly answered that when you said, hey, you know, through the podcasts, obviously, seeing your listeners getting some feedback, you are getting real time information that I’m sure shaped your next steps. Was there anything you did prior to starting that podcast as a PGY2 to validate the problem that needed to be solved, or was that the first step in?

Jimmy Pruitt 10:05

I think it was the first step. I would love to say that I had this aesthetic plan and things of that nature. But realistically, the first two years I was in business, I didn’t know I was in business. Yeah, because I wasn’t charging anything. I think that part of the equation that I didn’t look at what’s the value I was providing, and whether or not that was something that could be sold as a resume. And I think within pharmacy in general, we get so used to just providing a lot of content. And we’re just doing it for just the validation of our colleagues and just to provide great education. But I think the first piece that helped me understand the business aspect of it was when we started creating some of these, you know, hour long presentations, people said, hey, you know, is this for continuing education? And I said, Well, I can get it for but I didn’t realize the process, go through that. And then I remember saying, Hey, how can I get this credential? Is this AACPE certified? It’s like, oh, it’s a price tag to that. Yeah. And then the first step, like, how do I get that taken care of versus me just paying out of pocket a significant amount of money for one hour? I think the first the very first time I did this, three years ago, the credit hours was like $600 for one hour CE. And I was like, Well, if I have 100, people come to this, and we break this down, I think, you know, a few bucks would wouldn’t be horrible for me to do it. So I think that was the first step. But I think I don’t, it made me just think differently. That was the very first trigger to realize, like, hey, if I’m gonna sustain this, I have to figure out a way to monetize it, to just cover the basics of what I’m doing. I think that was the very first step in realizing people were okay with that. Not as many as I thought, initially. There’s a certain amount of people that was okay with that. And I realized that if I can scale it to any degree, it may be something that I can build build upon.

Tim Ulbrich 12:01

And speaking of first steps, you know, I often will will talk with folks that have an idea. But taking that idea, and taking the first step to begin implementation. It’s scary, right? I mean, you know, even when you do the validation of the idea, it’s one thing if people say, I’m interested, I’m gonna pay for it. It’s another thing if they actually show up and pay for it. And as you and I both know, you can assume some much lower percentage than then people may report. And so my question here is, how were you able to be comfortable with taking that first step, and maybe as a PGY2 resident, you know, maybe the pressures off a little bit, and you weren’t yet thinking about as a business, but even that, I’ve talked with pharmacists that are like, Hey, I’ve got a great idea. But, you know, to run a podcast, I got to do A, B, and C, and I got to worry about the microphone and editing and hosting, and yada, yada, yada. And soon enough, there’s no action. Right? There’s no action. And my question for you is, how were you able to take that important first step, that important first action, from which even though you didn’t know you’re in business, from what you would eventually learn and get feedback that would become the foundation of the business?

Jimmy Pruitt 13:09

Yeah, I think that the first step for me, and I would love again, to say that it was it was just phenomenal intuition and I was great, but it really came from mentorship. To be honest, the first thing was that someone, one of my mentors, John Paca, wanted to hear a podcast episode done by me. And he, he, I remember him mentioned, he’s my RPD, he’s my mentor, he was like, I want you to be yourself. And I want you to be different than everyone else. And that was the first thing he wanted me to do. So I think the process went from me having an idea to someone really pushing me and said they want to hear it. So the result was always him hearing this versus me starting it. So I think that was the first goal initially was that, hey, how let me produce this first episode, so he can hear it? Yeah. And that was the end result of the very first task or create this first pearl. So I can present it to these individuals because it’s part of my residency objectives. So I had like this end goal that I started while I was still in residency, but I think the biggest thing was him wanting to hear an episode, because the Pearls was the first thing but it wasn’t necessarily a first step into business. Pharm So Hard was actually the first step into business because again, that’s what opened me up to understanding the problems and the things that were valuable to people that wasn’t just my RPD. I think the first step was being able to start that podcast and the first step of me actually doing that was him saying, hey, I want I want to hear this. So I think for me, my action item was to complete it versus to start it. I think, getting to that point to where letting other people hear that episode, now that took a much longer period of time. To say same episode, I recorded the same thing, but having other people hear that and I was just fortunate to have him, Sean Troy Johnson, a few people to saying hey, you know, you should go for this and you should now let other people hear it. And I think once that came about my partner, Oscar Santalo, who initially started together, we went back and forward it on PGY1 but never gained traction. In PGY2 we gained a little bit more traction, and I made the first episode. And then it’s like, hey, I’ll do the next one. So it became this kind of back and forth to where I made the first one, we listened to it, it was fine. And then the next step was for him to do it. And then I had a little bit more time to be able to get to the next step. But I think those were our first action items. And I thought that I didn’t think it would lead to what it did. But I think just getting started and having some type of MVP is really what it being just having an MVP to start with. Now everything I do, I tried to create an MVP. But I think the first episode, and that was what, Brian Gilbert on antiquated reversal, back 2019? And its 2018. And that kind of lit to what it is today. But I think just getting that first MVP and having someone to push me, because traditionally, I wouldn’t have went through all the steps because my first episode took 16 hours to edit.

Tim Ulbrich 16:08

I remember those well. And I’ll occasionally throw back on, you know, episode one, just remember the journey. And, you know, but it’s a great reminder, I’ve mentioned on this show several times the book Start by Jon Acuff and I think your journey and story is such an important one that, you know, the dots aren’t always in a straight line. And the key is, when we take that first step, you know, we might have a loose idea, often not of what might be steps two, three, four and five, but it’s really through that first step that, you know, things start to happen, where in this case, your meeting a learning objective, you know, you sat down, you did the recording, obviously, there was some nudging in that process, you know, eventually it’s okay, we’re gonna edit this, we’re gonna share this, you know, and then they start snowballing. And obviously, through there, you start to build community, get feedback, validate the idea and start to evolve this into a business. And I’m so glad you mentioned mentorship, because it’s a critical reminder, for all our listeners out there that are precepting students, residents, fellows that are educators that, you know, sometimes we see something in someone, and it’s not until we can really slow down and have some of those in depth meaningful conversations that we can really help, you know, be the gentle nudge to help them – that learner – see something that may, they may not even see themselves. And that’s really what I heard, you know, in your journey, that your RPD saw something in you that perhaps, you know, naturally as a resident, you may not always see in the moment. And I love that right, because I think that’s, that’s true for many, many stories, many journeys, where we can reflect back on a mentor, I’m thinking of several, as you’re talking that were so influential, and just action steps that I took, that led to other things, but it wouldn’t have been without their mentorship and encouragement from the start.

Jimmy Pruitt 17:52

Absolutely.

Tim Ulbrich 17:54

So Jimmy, if I’m following your journey correctly, your five plus years in as a creator with the podcast, creating content, three years or so with the Acute Care University, we’ll talk about the conference here in a little bit as well. And you’re still working full time in clinical practice. Talk to us about your decision to stay full time in practice, as you’re trying to also grow a business and what value that’s provided and challenges, I would presume as well.

Jimmy Pruitt 18:23

It’s been unique, I would say, one of the things that we looked at is making sure I’m at that number, and making sure I don’t make the mistakes that I’ve seen other people do. And more importantly, make the mistakes that I’ve read about. The biggest thing that people say is like sometimes you have to just jump and you just have to do all these different things. And I’m like, I have a family, one. So that really kind of changes the dynamic. It’s not just me making this big shift, but I want to make sure that I was able to consistently get that number. And early on I end up saying once I’m able to make you know, one and a half times my my salary consistently, and my business can continue to function smoothly, then it will be a conversation of what I do from a full time standpoint. But I’ve noticed as I continue doing both of this, me being a business owner and being very focused as being the president, CEO, whatever the title you want to give yourself when you’re when you’re starting out, it actually made me a better employee. That was very unusual because I started going to work and said, Okay, understand the objectives that I’m trying to do, and understand how, what it feels like to have someone work for you. Yeah, and be able to accomplish these goals. So when I have conversations with the board and with the administrators at my hospital, I’m asking the question, Hey, what are the KPIs that we’re trying to understand? And they’re like, What are you you’re a clinical pharmacist? I said listen, I can solve many problems. I realize the problems that you’re going to care about. And more importantly, I realize the problems that the person that report to you is going to care about. I’m going to help save people lives. I work in emergency department. That’s my fulfillment. How can I make this a, you know, a symbiotic relationship to where I get the resources that I want, but I’m also getting the things that you want me to get. So from that perspective, being a better employee has made it more enjoyable, because now I’m able to go in and solve problems and be able to find different things and have conversations that before I started being, you know, heavily involved in my company, I didn’t understand all the problems. I didn’t understand those problems. So as I looked at the component of making sure I’m meeting that output, that I need to be able to consider stepping back, I also realized there was so much more value, because now I’m able to understand other people’s problems. And it makes me say, Hey, I may want to do this for a little bit more, because I’m able to do consultant work now where I can get brought in as a consultant for and ED pharmacotherapy, find different problems, and then say, Hey, I’ve done these things now, at certain institutions, and it opens up more doors for me at this point in my career, and I just don’t think that I initially thought that. Because I think everyone who goes into business initially thinks, oh, I’m going to work for myself, it’s gonna be great. I can wake up when I want to. It takes quite a while. But I’ve enjoyed the process. And I think as I look at all these things, what having a business and working full time has allowed me to do is cut a lot of this the skin out of my life when it comes to tasks that I don’t necessarily need to do. And it’s made it easier for me to focus on family, focus on activities, I want to focus on health. So I think having both of those has kind of put me in a position to where I have to stay very focused and enjoy, pick the things that I want to enjoy, and to glean different insights from situations knowing that there will be a transition at some point, yeah. But learning more at the job and understanding the problems that they have, and other people like them have, has made me be able to understand the market, and how I can potentially use that in the future. But more importantly, my skills as a business owner, has allowed me to be able to solve problems that early in my career, and earlier, you know, in places I’ve been people don’t necessarily think about. So yeah, I’ve enjoyed it. There’s challenges, of course of not being able to take significant breaks and being able to have days where you just do nothing. But I think realistically, the continuation of doing it and seeing some benefits allow me to be able to do both, and be able to enjoy both. Because now I walk into the ER I don’t have to be a CEO today. I could just focus on this component and is vice versa. So I’ve enjoyed it. It’s helped with burnout. But I’ve really enjoyed the process.

Tim Ulbrich 22:52

A few things you said there that I love, Jimmy, that are worth highlighting, you know that the patience that I hear there, the intentionality in your thought process. You talked about a certain multiple of income one and a half times and you know, that that’d be in a place where maybe the conversation starts to shift, obviously, you and your situation – everyone’s entrepreneur journey is different, right. And I think there’s sometimes there’s this blanket, kind of advice or blanket type of idealism around entrepreneurship, which is like, jump in, and you’ll figure it out. You know, and it’s like, you know, for some people, that is their story. It’s not my story, wasn’t your story. But for some people it is. And I think for everyone’s situation, you know, it’s different. And some of the things you said really resonated with me as I had some crossover from full time work and the entrepreneurial journey. And it was several years in before making that transition. But the connection between, you know, the entrepreneurial journey and becoming a better employee, I felt that. I felt like I brought more skills to the workplace. I felt like it prevented burnout, right, some of the change in pace and environment and work and, and I think there’s something to be said, too, when you’ve got, you know, the business that’s growing, and all of a sudden your employment becomes this place of opportunity and learning and growth like, wow. I would argue Jimmy’s probably that much better of an employee and an asset. Like you’re you’re not dependent necessarily in that moment on that income, you know, as you’re building something else, and you’re able to really bring the value to the workplace, you know, that you can bring. So I think a lot a lot of wisdom there that you shared, as well as just continuing to build build the skills. Jimmy, as you have grown from content creator to solopreneur, to now building out a team. And we’ll talk again about you know, the conference here in a little bit in the logistics and all that’s involved, my mind is spinning partly because I’ve been through this journey as well. And I know that with that growth, comes fruit and comes challenges as you look into building a team and delegating and letting go. Just talk to us about that journey. I think it’s something we don’t hear enough about, as we often hear maybe more solopreneur type of stories but as you have grown and you built the team, what has been and some of the fruit what have been the challenges of that?

Jimmy Pruitt 25:02

I think when looking at growing a team and really get into that first step of, I want to bring someone else into this, especially when you’re talking full time employment. The very first employee that I hired a couple of years back was just my virtual assistant. And one of the first aspects I realized was a very big challenge of mine was, how do I explain what’s in my head that I do every day? I didn’t realize how challenging that was going to be, until I started assigning tasks and realized that that wasn’t necessarily what the output that I wanted. And I realized that it wasn’t necessarily the employee’s fault. It was really how I was able to give information and how I was how detailed I was able to be about what’s the purpose, how to get there. And then SOPs and having templates and all those things that people talk about that are not, the cool thing to think about are so valuable. And what it allows, it allowed me to do is be able to communicate more efficiently. When I first got into pharmacy, what are the key things that was very, you know, self conscious about my ability to communicate, because again, I grew up inner city kid, again, not necessarily being around many college educated people. Again, I’m one of like, six high school graduates in my family. So the way I communicated, it was, again, very different than the way I communicate on a daily basis now. It was something that was a very limiting factor for me. And I realized that I had to figure out a way to communicate better. And I really, I love to talk, I love to kind of do these different things. But as many people can probably hear, I have a Southern sudden tone, I still, you know, speak in a particular way. And I realized that in order for me to work better with other people, especially on diverse set of people, I need to translate that, translate that and technology has been phenomenal. Being able to voice to text has been the best feature I’ve ever had. So that took the initial challenge of communicating exactly what I wanted to my first employee. And it kind when I went back and edit it and went back and forth, that changed everything. Then going from there to next step was figuring out how can I not spend all of my time not doing this, in the next step was reading different books, educating myself as a, Hey, have that employee have them make the template. You know the output that you want, you know, what’s quality work for you now have them do that. And I think once I’ve transitioned from being the only person that produce the output, to try and to explain that and figuring out better ways to explain what I want to allowing the person who I’ve been working with now for over two and a half years to make the template because they do it well. That was a very long process. But I think it was one of the more unique and impactful things that I’ve learned through this process. And it went from a major challenge to being something now that I consider to be a very, you know, streamlined process. And now bringing other people on has been a lot easier because I have something and a have that he can I can show them as an output, but I can also provide them now templates, SOPs and things of that nature. So I think that’s one aspect that many people don’t speak of, or think about, but the books are out there, people don’t speak on it, and think about enough when they’re starting a business. And I everything you do, guys, if you possibly can record yourself, speak through it, dictate it and do it once. So you can always be able to reference back to it. That’s the one thing I would like to tell people and then realizing that you have to take some level of consideration depth that everyone is not going to do it the same way you do it every single time. You have to create a process that allows for them to get close, I say 75% as good as you are on a consistent basis.

Tim Ulbrich 29:02

That’s really good stuff, Jimmy. I’ve had similar experiences and I think often people run up into, you know, barriers where they start to grow, they might hire a contractor to hire employees, they run into some of the frustrations you experienced. You know, I think we’re you push through it, often people may retract and kind of fall back into this solopreneur model, which again, everyone’s build something for different reasons, different goals. But as you continue on this vision, being able to accomplish the vision you have will depend on Hey, what time, what tasks need to get done beyond that that Jimmy can do within a day which requires a team and processes and all the things that you mentioned. You’re sharing reminded me of the book, procrastinate on purpose by Rory Vaden. He talks about, you know, exactly this concept of, you know, could you do the task in 10 minutes, that’s going to take you you know, five hours, you document you could. but there’s a certain return on time investment Right, if if you do a repetitive task five times a week, that takes you 30 minutes, sure, it’s gonna take you a lot longer to train someone to get to the quality that you want. But over enough repetitions, especially those recurring tasks, if you can fight through that, you’re gonna have a lot long term benefit of the return on time. And so I love the share that you had there, I think is a great example of that. I want to ask you to zoom out on your business for a moment. And I think it’s sometimes it’s hard as the CEO, as the person who’s operationalizing, at times in the weeds, you’re in the midst of planning for a conference, I’m sure there’s tons of logistics things that are moving, it’s hard to zoom back out to that 20,000 foot view to say, Where are we going? And why are we going in this direction? And so, Jimmy, as you zoom out and look at all the things you’re doing across the content, and the podcast, the PACU, the conference, the various educational products, the offerings that you have, what’s the five to 10 year vision? Where do you see the growth going, as you look at all these things you started and now you move into this this next phase of growth?

Jimmy Pruitt 31:10

That’s a great question. And I do this every once a while and I had to force myself usually, every every quarter, I tried to do it. Sometimes better than others. The big thing that I believe that I’m trying to accomplish over again, this next five to seven years is to make this to where we have one unified goal and mission we’re trying to do: provide high quality education related to pharmacotherapy. How do I go from many different products, many different services, many different things to one umbrella company that can be operationalized by other people consistently and provide that value that we started out with, and, and being okay, not knowing each individual step to get there. So I would love to say in in five years that I’m in a position where I’m sitting on a few boards, I am the one who makes the final checkoff. But I want other pharmacists that have this, this passion, to be able to impact people through education, to be able to monetize their expertise to have a home. And I don’t necessarily feel that there’s a huge home for that now, there’s opportunities to volunteer your time, there’s opportunities to be part of other organizations, things that nature, but I believe that there’s I should say, there’s not an abundance of homes for pharmacists, and those who engage in pharmacotherapy to share, monetize their expertise. I want to provide a home for those individuals and I want I want them to be able to have a home, whether they’re gonna be the consumer, or the producer. I think that those is the things that push me forward and figure out how can I add more people to my team to add that passion? How can I make sure that we do this, and I feel good about it, because at the end of all of this, the one main thing that’s going to happen is improved patient care. So for me, when I think my business perspective on that, I feel much better knowing that the very, very end end goal and very in any user of this, the recipient of all the things we’re doing is going to be someone getting the right drug at the right dose at the right time. And doing it in the right way. Yeah, so for me, I want to provide a platform that I’m leading, or that I’ve led, that’s going to be able to influence patients by those who expertly use pharmacotherapy.

Tim Ulbrich 33:42

What I love about that we haven’t talked too much about that on this episode is I’m a firm believer in having a strong anchor in your business of a why behind everything you’re doing, because through the ups and the downs, you’re going to have to rely on that anchor. And when you talk about everything pointing towards improved patient care, wow, that connects all the dots of everything we’ve been talking about, right? Because building a team, delegation, getting comfortable with that space, and, you know, may not always be done the same way that you do it in here community! Community of the consumer. Community of the Creator. Like, wow, the urgency of that is important, right? Because that’s all aligned towards being able to have more people in this community, creating in this community, as well as getting information and benefiting from the community, all pointing towards improved patient care. Like that, I just hope everyone hears that that is thinking about an idea or has a business that when you have that type of compelling torch of a vision and a flame. It provides so much clarity. I’m not saying it’s gonna be easy. It provides so much clarity of where are you going and why are you going there and that is so critical when you’re building something and not every business can say that. To have that type of clarity of vision and that type of clarity of messaging. I love that. Absolutely love that. Let’s talk about the Empower RX Conferene coming up April 26-27th in Charlotte, I’m really excited about our collaboration surrounding this event. I’m looking forward to have the opportunity to meet your community there live in Charlotte. And I suspect that we have several listeners that have different areas of clinical expertise that maybe are in acute care and are going to be attending the event. Maybe they’re brainstorming other educational opportunities in their own niche. So tell us more about the event. How did it get started? And how is it evolved to the current state?

Jimmy Pruitt 35:27

Absolutely. EmpowerRx has been just another brainchild of wanting to improve patient care. But realizing again, we sort of go back a couple years ago and realize the history of emergency medicine. Again, we had three PGY2s in emergency medicine back in 2004. I’m starting one this, we’re over 119, I believe, in 2020. So I think as we look at the number of the growth that’s there, we realized that not every aspect of emergency medicine pharmacotherapy has been able to catch up. One of the areas that I remember mentioning, as we made Pharm So Hard was that there wasn’t a place for us to come together, hang up talk about just emergency medicine, versus just having a 10 minute Pearls or just having a 60 minute session with a few presentations. That was you know, spread out dispersed amongst the major organizations, they’ve done a phenomenal job of providing resources, and helping us grow the specialty. But I wanted to provide a place that it was very unique to emergency medicine pharmacists. And if you know anything about us, if you’ve had, if any listeners are part of, you know that you have to be a certain type of personality to consistently work in emergency department. And I wanted to provide a space for that. So I remember sending a text message to Kyle Wendt, he was he was at MUSC at the time, and saying, hey, what if we just created our own conference? And what if we just made it to where it was? It was like, it wasn’t like any other from a professional standpoint, what if you just you didn’t wear dress clothes? What if you didn’t come there at a tie, you came there and a T shirt, some jeans, and you just was having a good time. And we just spent all day talking about things that really impact emergency medicine pharmacotherapy, whether it was clinical, or whether it was the social components. There’s a lot of things that happen in emergency medicine on a day to day basis that there’s it’s not in the textbook. You don’t know how to have the interaction with the one mean nurse. You don’t know how to, you know, make sure that you’re able to think quickly when that patient comes in, that’s unannounced. We want to provide a place where we can talk about those things. But also, can we be ourselves the same way we are at the bedside. Because many ER pharmacists will tell you, when we go to the actual pharmacy area, there’s a certain persona that we we uphold when we talking to our superiors. And there’s what happens in the ER when we spend the majority of our time with nurses, physicians, EMTs things that nature. So I wanted to provide that environment, that community. And we sent this out in 2020. And we want to figure out, how can we do it as for us and by us, instead of someone else creating it and thinking they know what we want. Why don’t we just create it from the ground up? And that really was the initial phase of this. And it led to us being able to create an environment where we speak on many aspects of acute care pharmacotherapy, particularly again, the resuscitation part of it. So whether you’re a central pharmacy that responds to cardiac arrest, we have information there for you whether you’re a nurse who just happened to be interested in the drug component, we have something for you. So I think we are a emergency medicine pharmacotherapy conference. And we’re not necessarily a EM pharmacist conference in a say. So I think it kind of brings together our world in one place over two days, and the initial one was going to be virtual, because again, COVID definitely has something to do with that. And then last year, partnering with SAEM. And we got to see a sense of it. But I think that the next phase was okay, we keep saying that we’re for us, and by us, we have that everywhere. This is the first year we’re going to do everything completely in person, have some virtual access and completely be for us and by us and we grew our team tremendously to build something that again, it’s for all of us. And when I say us, that can be a physician, that can be a nurse, that can be anyone in that space, but you now have a home to discuss pharmacotherapy.

Tim Ulbrich 39:24

I’m really excited to experience it. I’ve been to many, many pharmacy conferences, but I’m sensing there’s something different, something unique about this, and I can’t wait to be a part of it. Hopefully the emergency medicine folk will allow me into the room. It’ll be a good, good, good chance to interact. And I’m really looking for it’s another great example to me, Jimmy, of something that, you know, you obviously had interest built up in a community and following at the point of when you launched that first one, but you still had to take that first step, right. And sometimes that means success. Sometimes that means failure and certainly you’re going to learn and grow from it. And I can hear the evolution that the conference has taken the last several years. So really looking forward to being a part of that. And I just as we wrap up, Jimmy want to say I admire and I mean this wholeheartedly admire, what you’ve built, why you’ve built it, how you built it. I love the niche focus. I love the clear messaging you have, there’s a strong sense of community. And there’s a strong anchor back to the vision of why that you’re doing and that that is the recipe for success in my mind as people are thinking about building a business. So, Jimmy, thank you so much for taking time to come on the show. I appreciate it.

Tim Ulbrich 40:29

As we wrap up today’s episode, let me remind our acute care healthcare listeners about our partnership with the 2024 Empower Rx conference, a leading event and emergency medicine pharmacotherapy. This year, it’s happening in Charlotte, North Carolina on April 26, and 27th. I’ll be there and hope to see you there as well. It’s ideal for pharmacists, physicians, PAs, nurses and others in the field. The Empower RX conference offers more than 10 CPE credits, insights from top experts interactive workshops, and groundbreaking research. It’s not just a conference, it’s a community focused experience fostering learning and networking in a welcoming environment. Take advantage of discounted registration available to the YFP community by using code YFP2024 for 15% off. Again, that’s code YFP2024 for 15% off you can join in person or virtually register now at EmpowerRx-conference.com and elevate your emergency medicine skills. Again, that’s EmpowerRx-conference.com.

Jimmy Pruitt 40:29

Thanks for having me on, Tim.

Tim Ulbrich 41:32

As we conclude this week’s podcast and important reminder that the content on this show is provided to you for informational purposes only and is not intended 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 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 Pharmacists Podcast. Have a great rest of your week.

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