YFP 401: Ask YFP: Roth IRA Eligibility & Estimating Life Insurance Needs


Tim Ulbrich and Tim Baker tackle questions from the YFP community on life insurance needs for expectant parents and eligibility for direct Roth IRA contributions.

Episode Summary

On today’s episode, YFP Co-Founders Tim Ulbrich, PharmD and Tim Baker, CFP tackle two important questions from the YFP community. 

First, they dive into how to project your life insurance needs when welcoming a new baby into the family and then Tim and Tim break down how Modified Adjusted Gross Income (MAGI) is calculated to help you determine if you’re eligible for direct Roth IRA contributions.

If you have a question you’d like featured on an upcoming episode, visit yourfinancialpharmacist.com/askyfp or email [email protected].

Key Points from the Episode

  • [0:00] Introduction and Episode Overview
  • [00:54] Question 1: Life Insurance Needs for Expecting Parents
  • [01:33] Tim Baker’s Advice on Life Insurance and Retirement Plans
  • [09:17] Question 2: Calculating Modified Adjusted Gross Income (MAGI)
  • [09:34] Understanding AGI vs. MAGI
  • [14:33] Conclusion

Episode Highlights

“Having a baby tends to lead to some reflection about a lot of things, including finances, you know, savings, life insurance, disability, estate planning, education planning, all those things kind of come to mind.” – Tim Baker [1:39]

“ If you’re talking about the retirement plans, when a spouse dies, their assets essentially transfer to the beneficiary. Most of the time it’s going to be you as the surviving spouse.”  – Tim Baker [3:23]

“One of the things to remember with Roth IRAs is that you can typically take out your basis or what you can contribute without penalty or tax.” – Tim Baker [4:24]

Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode

Episode Transcript

Tim Ulbrich: Hey everybody, Tim Ulbrich here. Welcome to this week’s episode of the YFP podcast, where we strive to inspire and encourage you on your path towards achieving financial freedom today. YFP co founder, COO and certified financial planner. Tim Baker joins me to answer two questions from the YFP community.

Tim Ulbrich: One on projecting life insurance needs and another on how modified adjusted gross income is calculated to know whether or not you’re eligible to make Roth IRA contributions. If you have a question you would like for us to feature on an upcoming episode, head on over to your financial pharmacist.com/ask yfp to record your question or send us an email at [email protected].

Tim Ulbrich: And before we get started, I wanna let you know that we’re now publishing the podcast in video form on YouTube. If you wanna watch this [00:01:00] episode, make sure to subscribe to the Your Financial Pharmacist YouTube channel where we’ll publish. New shows each week. All right, let’s jump in with our first question, which came to us via email.

Tim Ulbrich: And that question is. My wife and I are pregnant and are reviewing our life insurance policies. If one of us passes away, does the other spouse have early tax free access to use the deceased spouses Roth IRA 401k SEP IRA or solo 401k, or would the spouse still have to wait until they are retirement age, typically 59 and a half.

Tim Ulbrich: To access. We’re trying to determine how much more life insurance we need to buy with a new baby on the way. My wife and I are in our thirties. Tim Baker, what are your thoughts on this?

Tim Baker: Yeah, so first of all, congrats on on baby coming. Um, that’s uh, that’s monumentous. I feel like Tim having a baby tends to lead to some reflection about a lot of things, including finances, you know, savings, life insurance, disability, [00:02:00] estate planning, education planning, all those things kind of come to mind.

Tim Baker: Um, you know, I think. If if I’m, if I’m answering this question, I separate these things in terms of, like, life insurance versus, like, you know, um, retirement plans. Um, because I think, especially when you’re young, you know, spending some money on a, on a fairly inexpensive term insurance to keep those.

Tim Baker: Retirement plans, um, unadulterated is worth it. Um, because, you know, 1 of the misconceptions is like, when you retire. You, your expenses are going to be, I wouldn’t say they’re going to be the same as if there’s 1 person versus 2, but it’s going to be, you know. It’s going to be pretty expensive. So like, I, I wouldn’t look at that as like, as insurance.

Tim Baker: So I think I would look at it in, in the, in the confines of like, okay, this is for the purpose of retirement. And this is the purpose of, you know, insurance. [00:03:00] So there are different rules for different types of accounts, um, and different types of beneficial, uh, different types of beneficiaries. So. Um, you know, if you’re both in your thirties, you’re having a baby, if you’re really healthy, I would look at term insurance.

Tim Baker: You know, I always kind of talk about the rule of 30, which I have to look at, but basically, uh, to see if that still holds Tim, but the rule of 30 was you could buy a half a million dollar term insurance policy. Um, 30 year policy. If you’re in your 30s for about 30 bucks a month. Right? So I’m sure prices have gone up since I’ve been talking about that.

Tim Baker: So I have to, I have to make sure

Tim Ulbrich: Sounds about right. Yeah.

Tim Baker: I think that is important to understand. So, um, but when, if you’re talking about the retirement plans, when a spouse dies, each. their Their assets essentially transfer to the beneficiary. Most of the time it’s gonna be you as the spouse, um, the surviving spouse.

Tim Baker: So there’s really five options with, with these types of IRAs. Now, 4 0 1 ks and 4 0 3 Bs will be a little bit different, but I’m gonna speak specifically about IRAs. [00:04:00] But first option you can do is you can keep the IRA so a beneficiary can withdraw the funds even if they’re younger. Then 59 and a half 59 and a half without paying a 10 percent early withdrawal penalty.

Tim Baker: If the deceased has already started taking distribution. So in this case, that wouldn’t be that wouldn’t be it because you’re younger. Um, a surviving spouse, a minor child or disabled person is required to take what’s called RMDs required minimum distributions based on the deceased person’s age. Rather than the beneficiary, if the, if the air is not a spouse and there’s different rules.

Tim Baker: So there’s, there’s kind of spousal rules and non spousal rules. One of the things to remember with, with Roth IRAs is that you can typically take out your basis or what you can contribute without penalty or tax. Right? So that’s important to know off, off the rip. The second option is, Roll over the IRA.

Tim Baker: So beneficiaries can roll assets into a personal IRA without paying income tax or early withdrawal penalties, unless they are 59 and a half. So a rollover [00:05:00] into an inherited IRA does not incur penalties. If the assets have been in the accounts for 5 year, 5 years. Um, and this option Tim is only. Uh, open to our surviving spouse who must transfer to the same type of account.

Tim Baker: So traditional to the traditional or Roth to Roth. Um, the third option here is to convert to a Roth IRA. So that in this case, you know, we’re talking about a Roth IRA. You could also disclaim part of the assets. You say, I don’t, I don’t want it or cash out the IRA. So in most cases, what I would say from a planning perspective, um, what I would say is Don’t think of your spouse’s, um, retirement house assets as a form of insurance.

Tim Baker: I would say by the insurance, but if you do get into a pinch from a, from a cashflow perspective, you can access those funds, especially, um, if you are the spouse and if you’re looking at basis without taking the penalties. So there’s, there’s a few different layers of sorts that I would go through before.

Tim Baker: You know, get into a point where you can [00:06:00] completely cash out the IRAs. But is, this is just like a, um, this is typically just like a. Um, like a backdoor Roth conversion, the flow chart on this can be very complicated in terms of, okay, when did they start distributing it? Did they not? How old’s the, the, the deceased spouse?

Tim Baker: How old’s the surviving spouse, et cetera. So it can be very complicated. So I think if I’m in my thirties, I’m basically layering a little bit more. Uh, term insurance where I feel comfortable and I’m, I’m treating that, um, deceased spousal IRA or 401k as if it’s, you know, my own retirement plan and not, you know, not an insurance, um, bump, so to speak.

Tim Ulbrich: Yeah. Tim, I like how you’re separating out these two things. And I do love the question, right? Because there’s a, there’s an intentionality and I can tell some in depth analysis going on that we’re not just applying blanket rules of how much term life insurance do I need, but actually trying to get to the question, which needs to be answered when it comes to buying term life insurance, which is what do I [00:07:00] need this policy to replace?

Tim Ulbrich: And in this question, there’s some background questions of, Hey, well, if there are retirement Will those be accessible or not? I’m with you, right? If someone’s in their thirties, you know, not advice for them, but I would think of it the same way you are. If I’m in my thirties, babies on the way, assuming relatively healthy, inexpensive term life insurance policy.

Tim Ulbrich: If I’m looking at these two things, just to put some numbers to this, and I’m looking at, Hey, maybe I’d need a million dollar term policy versus a one and a half or 2 million. If I were to exclude these, uh, retirement assumptions, when you consider the cost of these policies, again, we’re making some assumptions of health and other things, but based on age, like that feels kind of like a no brainer, right?

Tim Ulbrich: In terms of keeping it clean separation of these two things and relatively inexpensive, assuming that the monthly budget can handle the extra, whatever it’d be, you know, 20, 30 bucks a month to add on to the term coverage. So, um, I like that because I think sometimes we can make these things maybe overly complicated and, uh, you know, [00:08:00] I, I like the intent of the question, but, but I also like thinking of these buckets separately in there.

Tim Ulbrich: And there’s a peace of mind component here too, knowing that, Hey, we’ve got the life insurance piece that’s purely for the sake. Hopefully we never use it, but if it’s, if it’s there, you know, we have access to those funds.

Tim Baker: Yeah. And there, and there are other things that I would potentially pull levers before I would even look at retirement plans that could be. You know, leverage in debt or other things, you know, like, uh, a HELOC or something, I think, even before I would, I would start cashing in retirement plans. So, again, I think it’s, uh, all the reason to have, you know, this is about planning, not a plan, you know, all the reason to have a planner to kind of work through life events and hopefully nothing like this ever happens.

Tim Baker: But I think it’s a great thought experiment to kind of go down

Tim Ulbrich: One last thing I’ll say on this before we move to our second question is for those listening that maybe don’t have term life insurance or wondering about, you know, what’s all involved in a term life insurance policy. How do I begin to think about and evaluate what the [00:09:00] need is? Or if you have a term life insurance policy, uh, wondering if, if that coverage is appropriate, or maybe you just have an employer.

Tim Ulbrich: Policy and you’re wondering about your own policy. We’ve got a very comprehensive resource life insurance for pharmacists the ultimate guide Uh that will give some great background educational information on this topic We’ll link to that blog article in the show notes so you can read more and learn more on that Tim said you mentioned backdoor roth.

Tim Ulbrich: We got it. We got to go there, right? So

Tim Baker: my

Tim Ulbrich: your favorite topic. Yeah, so our second question Our second question is also came into us via email. How do you calculate? Modified Adjusted Gross Income to know if you’re eligible to contribute. To a Roth IRA. What, what are your thoughts on this one?

Tim Baker: Yeah. So a lot of us use magi and AGI synonymously. So modified adjust, just to adjusted to gross income is not the same as adjusted gross income. Um, although we, again, we use them the same. So to [00:10:00] determine, so just to kind of throw out some numbers, um, if you are filing single and you’re modified, adjusted gross income is.

Tim Baker: 150, 000, we’ll say it’s 150, 000, 165, 000, once it gets to 165, 001, the door for you to be able to, um, Contribute directly into a Roth IRA shuts. So once you make a, once your magi is $165,000 and 1, you can no longer make a direct contribution. So this is where you have to contribute to traditional, go through a bunch of steps and then, and then move it over to

Tim Ulbrich: Are you talking about for individuals or joint filing?

Tim Baker: That’s that’s for single file and for, for Mary phone jointly, the phase out is phase out is 236, 000 to 246, 000. So once you make 246, 001 dollars, you cannot directly put, you know, contributions into a Roth IRA. So how do [00:11:00] we get this number? The modified adjusted gross income. Um, so really what you want to do is you want to actually start with AGI.

Tim Baker: So AGI, I believe is line 11 on form 1040.

Tim Ulbrich: Nailed

Tim Baker: Um, awesome. So then you have to add back in. Certain deductions, um, to get your magi. So these would be things like student loan interest deduction, which, you know, a lot of people aren’t getting that because they make too much money, um, tuition and fees deduction.

Tim Baker: If that’s available IRA contributions, deduction, um, if you’re contributing to a traditional IRA and taking a deduction. Also, typically not available. It could be rental losses. If you’re, if, uh, the rental losses are subject to pass passive activity, uh, loss limits. Um, other things could be, uh, excluded foreign earned income.

Tim Baker: excluded employer adoption benefits, half of self employment tax deduction, any passive loss or passive income interest from series E savings bonds used for education. [00:12:00] And finally, losses from publicly traded partnerships. So once you add back these deductions, that gets your Modified adjusted income, and that’s, um, gross income.

Tim Baker: And that’s essentially the number that you use to say, okay, can I make a contribution directly into the Roth or do I have to do a backdoor strategy to go from a traditional into a Roth? Um, that’s Magi. So it’s often the case for a lot of people that they don’t have a ton there. So that’s why we kind of use it synonymously.

Tim Baker: But, but there is slight differences in that AGI and MAGI number.

Tim Ulbrich: Tim, I think this is a really good question. Not, not only from the Roth contribution, but you’re starting to dissect. The IRS form 1040 a little bit, right? As you’re talking through the different things, when we look at, you know, the terms we throw around income and gross income and adjusted gross income modified, adjusted gross income, understanding what are the above the line deductions, other deductions, credits, et cetera.

Tim Ulbrich: [00:13:00] Here, we’re talking of things that are above the line that you were, you were listing off. But the reason I’m going there and I’m not suggesting we need to go down the tax rabbit hole, but the more we understand. Okay. Thank you. Kind of the flow of dollars from a tax standpoint and what these terms mean.

Tim Ulbrich: We start to see some of the levers that we could potentially pull from a tax optimization standpoint, as well as being able to answer questions like this one, which is like, Hey, can I make direct contributions to a Roth? Do I phase out? Do I need to consider it back to a Roth? And then if so, you know, what does that look like?

Tim Ulbrich: And how do I make sure I’m doing that correctly? We’ve addressed that on the show previously as well.

Tim Baker: yeah, I’ve talked about this with tax. It’s like, you know, understanding the 1040 kind of gives you not the answers to the test, but you can kind of start to see visually how the form is populated. And then I think it can ultimately affect your behavior and how best to optimize. Again, I sometimes people do some crazy things just to get a tax benefit, which doesn’t [00:14:00] necessarily work.

Tim Baker: You know, fit with their overall financial plan. So it’s kind of just doesn’t make any sense. But I think if you understand the construct of, you know, the, the tax code and the tax form, then you can, you know, your, your behavior can then be, you know, slightly altered to, to optimize your tax situation.

Tim Ulbrich: Yeah. And if you’re listening, you know, here in some of these terms wondering what, what are these guys talking about in terms of, you know, a backdoor Roth versus a direct contribution, we actually talked about this recently on an RX money roundup, episode 18. And we answered the question, can I do a backdoor Roth IRA myself?

Tim Ulbrich: That’s why I was joking with Tim that it’s his favorite, favorite topic to talk about. So we’ll link to that in the show notes, make sure to check that out. And, uh, you’ll, you’ll find a good resource there that will help you, uh, in your own. Planning as well. Thanks again to the two questions that we had submitted, uh, this week.

Tim Ulbrich: And, uh, if you have a question as you’re listening that you’d like to have us feature on an upcoming episode, head on over to yourfinancialpharmacist. com forward slash ask YFP. You can record your question there, or [00:15:00] you can send us an email at info. At your financial pharmacist. com. Thanks again for listening.

Tim Ulbrich: If you like what you heard, please do us a favor, leave us a rating and review on Apple podcast, which will help other pharmacists find the show. And finally, an important reminder that the content in the podcast is provided 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 product.

Tim Ulbrich: For more information on this. You can visit yourfinancialpharmacist. com forward slash disclaimer. Thanks so much for listening and have a great rest of your week. 

[END]

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YFP 400: From Pharmacy to Podcasting: Anisha Patel’s Journey of Growth & Entrepreneurship


In this episode, Tim Ulbrich chats with Anisha Patel, host of the Pharmacist Diaries podcast, about her journey through pharmacy, entrepreneurship, and personal growth, including her work at Oxford and Cleveland Clinic Abu Dhabi, and how launching her podcast during the pandemic opened new opportunities.

Episode Summary

In this episode, Tim Ulbrich, YFP Co-Founder, is joined by Anisha Patel, host of the Pharmacist Diaries podcast, to discuss her inspiring journey through pharmacy, entrepreneurship, and personal growth.

Anisha’s story spans from growing up in a family of independent pharmacists in the UK to working at Oxford University Hospitals and Cleveland Clinic Abu Dhabi. She also shares how she launched her podcast during the pandemic, which has since grown into a global platform. In this conversation, Tim and Anisha dive into the power of storytelling in healthcare, the intersection of entrepreneurship and pharmacy, and how embracing non-traditional career paths can open doors to new opportunities.

About Today’s Guest

Anisha Patel is a paediatric pharmacist turned podcaster and digital creator who’s passionate about showcasing the limitless possibilities within healthcare careers. Through her podcast “The Pharmacist Diaries” (174+ episodes strong!),  she shares stories of innovative pharmacists worldwide while building a community that breaks free from traditional career moulds.

After 14 years in clinical practice, including stints as the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix pharmacist and working in emergency services in the UAE, Anisha has embraced entrepreneurship to help other healthcare professionals find their voice through podcasting. When she’s not recording episodes or coaching aspiring podcasters, Anisha is planning global adventures with her family or sharing insights about designing a life of impact and freedom.

Key Points from the Episode

  • [00:00] Welcome Back, Anisha Patel!
  • [00:24] Choosing Pharmacy: A Family Influence
  • [01:10] Cultural Expectations and Independence
  • [02:48] Educational Journey: From Virginia to the UK
  • [03:37] Confusion and Self-Discovery
  • [05:27] Retail Pharmacy: A Community Connection
  • [07:47] Falling in Love with Hospital Pharmacy
  • [08:24] Residency at Oxford: A Transformative Experience
  • [08:48] Night Shifts and Rotations
  • [12:19] Meeting Sunjay and Moving to Dubai
  • [19:12] Adventures in Dubai: Changing Laws and Building Pharmacies
  • [21:25] Returning to the UK: Balancing Work and Family
  • [23:24] Discovering a Passion for Pediatrics
  • [27:51] Starting the Pharmacist Diaries Podcast
  • [33:05] The Podcast Journey Begins
  • [33:47] Building Connections and Expanding Reach
  • [34:23] The Impact of Podcasting
  • [41:04] Mentorship and Coaching
  • [50:41] Balancing Work and Passion
  • [58:35] Future Aspirations and Vision
  • [01:05:05] Conclusion and Contact Information

Episode Highlights

“The connections that I make with people are genuine friendships and their lifelong friendships. And the reason why is because my podcast is not a traditional pharmacy podcast.” – Anisha Patel [36:45]

 “As an employee, I’ve been controlled for the last 14 years and I  just thought this is normal life, right? But now  I’ve been exposed to doing things my own way, working in the style that I like, the time that I want, making the connections with people in, you know, a non-scripted way has just given me this spark of, “Wow, I can do so much more with this.” – Anisha Patel [38:28]

“ I now realize that there is this sort of vision that I could live anywhere in the world. I could have a digital business where I could educate, mentor, and support pharmacists or healthcare professionals to start a podcast  and become a thought leader on a global  scale.” – Anisha Patel [43:41]

“ One thing that I would say about Pharmacist Diaries that I’ve discovered in this journey is that it’s pure passion and I don’t want that to go away because I’ve realized when you fall in love with something, it never feels like work.” – Anisha Patel [59:22]

Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode

Episode Transcript

Tim Ulbrich: Anisha, welcome to the show.

Anisha Patel: Oh my goodness, it’s round two. I’m so happy to be back.

Tim Ulbrich: Well, it’s been a long time in the making and, uh, you and I have had a chance to connect, uh, and get to know each other a little bit better over the last couple of years, and I am thrilled to have you on the podcast and excited to talk, uh, career journey, entrepreneurship, family, life, who knows where the conversation will go.

So, uh, let, let’s start with the career journey in pharmacy. What led you To choose pharmacy as a profession. Mm hmm.

Anisha Patel: My parents owned a pharmacy when I was growing up. They’re not pharmacists. My dad’s an accountant, but they both owned a chain of pharmacies, independent pharmacies here in the UK. So they owned it [00:01:00] from a business perspective, had two or three pharmacies. I grew up. Working in the pharmacy, doing stock, like doing the old school, like price tags, um, yeah, filling shelves.

So I was, I was exposed to a community pharmacy environment from a very young age and being from an Asian background. Education was really important growing up, and I would say that we were very encouraged to go down a professional route. So whether that was medicine, pharmacy, lawyer, engineer, etc. Um, there was an expectation to go to university or college and, um.

Not only from the point of view of having a professional degree and a professional career, but also my dad always encouraged me as a female to think about being independent and not necessarily relying on my [00:02:00] potential future husband for income and salary. And one of the things that he talked about with pharmacy, because he was obviously exposed to the environment.

Being an owner was that he saw what locums were doing or what we call as UK or PRN pharmacists and how a lot of them were female and a lot of them were mothers who came kind of like chopped in and out of the career as and when they kind of had children and family life and. Knowing that the career was always going to be there for you when you return from say a maternity leave or if you want to take time out for two to three years while whilst you have young children in the house and then coming back to pharmacy that was always available even you know 25 30 years ago plus the fact that you earn a really good Salary, you’re well respected in the community.

It’s a professional degree. You learn so much and you’ve got all this [00:03:00] expertise. So I did really well in science. I actually moved to Virginia as a high school student, and then I did my first degree at Virginia Tech in biology and chemistry.

Tim Ulbrich: didn’t know that. All right. Yeah.

Anisha Patel: I did. That element of kind of us life. I totally understand how the undergraduate degree works there, but I missed London and I missed home a lot.

And I lived there for nine years and I made the decision to come back to the UK to do pharmacy afterwards.

Tim Ulbrich: Did you think going in that you were going to own your own pharmacy? Given, given the background, you mentioned your father owning pharmacies as a, as a non pharmacist, which I think is really interesting because there’s the entrepreneurial thread there that we’ll come back to here in a little bit. But did you anticipate going into pharmacy training that you were going to own pharmacies?

Anisha Patel: No, I, if I’m completely honest about my pharmacy degree as a choice, when I was in [00:04:00] my early 20s, I was quite confused about maybe, if I reflect back, I was confused about who I was. I’d moved countries quite a few times. I would have to Build relationships in new places. Living in London when I was growing up, I was private school educated.

It’s an all girls school. And then going into like Richmond, Virginia, where I’m exposed to a mixed environment, like no school uniform. Um, a very different way of living, you know, as exposed to high school parties and drinking at an early age. And it was just really different. And I think I got really confused about who I was and what I wanted to be.

And I was so focused on trying to fit in. I genuinely, I, I changed my accent. I got an American accent cause I got really frustrated with people maybe picking on me or exposing me for being different. They didn’t [00:05:00] understand that I had sort of, um, darker colored skin, but I’m from England. They didn’t really know what England was 1990s.

A lot of people who I went to school with didn’t have a passport and weren’t well traveled. So they, they were like, okay, well, what do you mean you’re Indian? But you’re from England, is American Indian, you know, so it was, you know, I was confused and going into my first degree, I felt like I was following an expectation from my family. And because I was good at science, it just kind of pharmacy just kind of fell into my lap. And When I started pharmacy school here in the UK, I worked in a retail pharmacy as, um, a student every single weekend and it was an independent pharmacy and I actually genuinely loved retail and the pharmacy that I was exposed to, it was such an amazing family environment.

You got to know the [00:06:00] customers and that time that I spent in the U S really helped me to build my confidence, go up to anybody and speak to anybody. Cause it’s completely different to the UK. You would find that people in England are quite reserved in comparison to the U S. Like even if you go to, I don’t know, Abercrombie or any clothing store.

Someone will say hi to you. Someone will approach you. Someone will ask you if you need any help. Someone will check whether or not you need support with buying and purchasing clothes while in England, no one, like no one would really speak to you’d walk into a store. And if someone approached you, you’d be like, mind your own business.

Like, why are you speaking to me? And so the, the lifestyle and my personality shifted and. I became really kind of extroverted from having to make new friends and live in this new environment and figure out who I was. So when I worked in retail, it was so nice to be able to get to know the community and [00:07:00] know everyone’s kind of family members, what medications they were on, how many children they had.

When people’s birthdays were and they’d come to the pharmacy to actually purchase like perfumes and, and different products and things like that. So that exposure that I had to retail pharmacy was also similar to what kind of pharmacy my dad owned. If I walked to the pharmacy from the car park to my dad’s store, which is about a three minute walk, we would be stopped about 15 to 20 times because everyone in the town knew my dad and everyone would just come into the pharmacy just to speak to him, say hi to him.

He was literally the heart of the community. And I remember this growing up and working in that retail pharmacy also then brought back some of those memories. So I did have a love for pharmacy, but I also didn’t just want to work in retail. I discovered that I really enjoyed the clinical aspect of pharmacy and patient education was a massive part of something that I really enjoyed.

[00:08:00] And I exposed myself to the hospital environment during Sort of hospital placements, um, during the university setting. And then when you do your kind of intern year, I chose hospital as my full year of internship. And I fell in love with it and I thought that’s it. I’m doing hospital pharmacy. There’s no turning back.

I’m going to be employed within the national health service, which is our government kind of hospital facilities. Like this is it I’m choosing my, my role and I loved it. And I just fell in love with it. And I thought that was what I was going to do forever.

Tim Ulbrich: So, let’s talk about that interest in, in clinical practice, clinical setting. You would end up doing a residency at Oxford University Hospitals, three year experience as I understand it, correct? Very different from our experiences here, uh, in the United States, as many of our listeners will know. So I’m curious about that experience and yes, the clinical aspect of it, but I’m, I’m more curious about how did that three year experience shape you as an individual, personally and [00:09:00] professionally?

Anisha Patel: so how the three year experience works in a residency here is, um, it’s usually the larger sort of teaching hospitals that have a residency service because they have a requirement for night shifts and support from pharmacy because it’s extremely busy. And at the time I worked there, we were covering around, I think, 1600 patients across four hospitals within Oxford.

And. Night shifts would include starting at 4 p. m. in the evening and you would finish at 8 a. m. in the morning. And between those hours, you would probably receive about 150 bleeps in that time. So it’s, it’s pretty busy. From 4 p. m. till 8 p. m. you have support from other members of the pharmacy team. And then from 8 p.

  1. till 8 a. m. you are on your own. And most of us stayed on site, um, just because it was [00:10:00] easier. You had to live within a 10 minute distance of the hospital if you did choose to go home, because you would just need to come back, back in maybe for, for controlled drugs or emergencies or anything really. So most of us would stay on site and they would give us a room as well.

If we needed to just rest in between doing the work. And we would do that for sort of four nights in a row and then have three days off.

Tim Ulbrich: Wow.

Anisha Patel: Every three months we would rotate to a new clinical area. So in the first kind of year, it’s a lot of general medicine, general surgery. And then from year two, you would start going into the more specialist areas.

So pediatrics, maybe clinical trials, kind of the aseptics area, medicines information, um. The more complex surgery areas like upper GI, lower GI. I did infectious diseases. I did CF. I got exposed. Anything and everything because of the way this [00:11:00] hospital had access to everything. And you work with these incredible pharmacists with, you know, 15, 20, 25 years of experience in that area of expertise.

So you have these role models all around you, just inspiring you left, right, and center. And one of the best things about doing this residency is you get the exposure that you want to learn, which area of expertise you want to go into. You also get exposed to a ward environment. So the pharmacotherapy team, you get exposed to clinics and pharmacists can now prescribe in the UK.

So you’ve got these pharmacists who are running clinics like physicians. They’re able to physically assess, use a stethoscope, like palpate, percuss, order blood tests, take bloods, and prescribe medications. And you’ve got all of that side of pharmacy to look. Forward to, and then you’ve got the kind of skills that you get within a medicine’s information department, answering calls and inquiries and doing more of [00:12:00] the, you know, really detailed evidence based research and figuring out how to answer questions.

And then also how to deliver that communication, whether it’s a doctor, a patient, a nurse, et cetera. And during that time, I built so much confidence as a pharmacist. I really built my foundation. in terms of being a clinical pharmacist. I became really assertive. I could work on my own. I worked under pressure.

I built confidence to understand what the role of a pharmacist is. And during that time, I met Sanjay and he was already living in Dubai. I was flying back and forth from Dubai after night shifts. I’d finished my night shifts eight o’clock in the morning and go on a bus directly to the airport, fly out to Dubai for four days, come back on a night shift and come straight to work from the airport.

I did some crazy stuff, but you know, when you’re in your twenties and you’re, you know, you’re young, you, you have all this enthusiasm to do [00:13:00] crazy and spontaneous wild stuff. So it was a really exciting adventure for me. And then. Obviously unexpectedly, this relationship happened. And I made that decision at the end of my residency to go on this adventure to live in Dubai.

But if I hadn’t have gone on that adventure, I would have then had. To make a choice about the area of specialty that I wanted to go into. But if I didn’t know exactly what I wanted to do, we have roles that are available where it’s still rotational, but instead of three month rotations, it’s one year rotations.

So you could stay in the same hospital, you get a slightly better pay, and you would then have one year rotations and spend more time in that area, a little bit more responsibility, and then from there you would obviously start making decisions as to where you truly want to go.

Tim Ulbrich: I really like that model, Anisha. I think we often in our training model [00:14:00] here, which isn’t unique to pharmacy. I think we see it medicine and others as well. We put a lot of pressure early on to define a path. I felt that, you know, your, your journey resonated with me when you were talking about the decision making process in the pharmacy.

I went to a direct entry. Uh, farm D program on high school, 6 years started 18 finished at 24, uh, felt the pressure to go down a certain path and residency. And then that path and residency kind of put me on another path and it wasn’t really until I had some really good mentors that helped me kind of step back and see, oh, there’s a, there’s a path that’s open in all these different ways.

And. In particular, for me, it was really de identifying the identity to any title or role as a pharmacist or who I worked for, and more about the skills that I was acquiring, the interest that I had, and that was a light bulb moment of, Oh, like these dots can connect in all different types of ways, and so when I hear about experiences where it affords some of that [00:15:00] flexibility for those that aren’t yet ready to choose, I really like to hear that because I, I think that pressure can be significant and then I’ll often talk with pharmacists who, you know, might be in their mid thirties, early forties, they, they did two years of clinical specialty in a certain area.

They don’t have an interest in administration or management. They’ve kind of hit in the top of their opportunities from a clinical role standpoint. And they’re like, I’ve got 20 years left in my career. And I’m usually talking about it from the financial aspect. But, um, I think that’s a big consideration for many people to be, you know, thinking about, let me say, by the way, we are so uncool here in the U S we, we need to use beliefs.

Uh, when you’re, we, I’m guessing you’re done by like a PA a pager system. Am I, am I right?

Anisha Patel: Absolutely. 

Tim Ulbrich: I love that bleeps. That’s

Anisha Patel: Bleeps. Though I worked for Cleveland Clinic, obviously, when I moved to Abu Dhabi, and then I used, I can’t remember what they’re called, but they sit on your neck. And, and. Sound comes out from them, [00:16:00] like a little speaker system, which I found very strange, but I also really liked working for a US system.

I really enjoyed. It was a massive change. I mean, one example of the differences is if, if a patient comes in to hospital from home and, you know, they come through an ambulance through A& E, the paramedics will pick up all their medicines and try their best to actually find them in that person’s house and bring those medications.

And part of the pharmacist’s role when you have a new admission on any ward is that you do your drug history, your medication history. And part of that is actually looking at that patient’s own medication. So it’s patient’s own drugs, which we call pods. And you look through that patient’s medications.

You’re speaking to the patient about. What they take, how often they take it, and you compare it to obviously [00:17:00] what they’ve brought into hospital. If things are labeled incorrectly and they’re taking it differently, we obviously send them down to pharmacy to relabel them. But during that process, we then obviously assess what the patient’s currently on, on their drug chart.

And what the doctors have actually prescribed and we do the medicines reconciliation to check if there are any changes, things that are stopped, doses, maybe that have increased or decreased, or maybe things that have been just forgotten because the doctors don’t do a thorough history like we do and getting all those problems, you know.

Reconciled standard pharmacist role, but what we also do at that point is that if the patient tells you that actually I don’t have much aspirin left, I’ve only got three tablets and I don’t have any extra supplies, I am running out of my besoprilol and I need some statins at that point, you would order them one full box of medication, which is a 28 day supply.

Generally, they would use that [00:18:00] during their admission. And then when you discharge them, yeah. You don’t have the lengthy process of them waiting for the discharge medications and they just go home with those boxes.

Tim Ulbrich: so much sense.

Anisha Patel: Yeah. So we don’t have this individualized dosing system in the, in the UK. It is trying to prep them for discharge and you usually have pharmacy technicians on the ward that you, you work on.

So they will be going around to patients. Lockers. We have lockers by the bedside. They will go around to the patient lockers every day and assess how much supply do they have? How do I replenish it during their admission? So that when you are discharging them, you’re literally maybe at a computer and you’re only really needing to, you know, screen it clinically.

And you’ve got the medications right in front of you. So you know how much supply that you actually have on the ward. So pharmacy actually have no involvement in patient pharmacy. At that point. And they don’t have to go to [00:19:00] outpatient pharmacy either to collect it. Everything’s given to you on the ward itself.

Tim Ulbrich: I really like that. Uh, lots that we can learn from, from that system and adopt. So before we shift to your entrepreneurial journey, which I’m excited to get to, tell us where you’re at today in your clinical pharmacy journey. So you did a three year residency at Oxford. You moved to the United Arab Emirates.

You had some international experience working for the Cleveland Clinic there. You’re back in the UK now. So tell us about the work that you’ve been doing since moving back from the United Arab Emirates and clinically what, what you’re up to today.

Anisha Patel: Yeah. So when I worked in the UAE, I had two jobs. I worked for Cleveland clinic for a few years, but I also worked for, um. The, the Abu Dhabi government, their emergency services. So the ambulance organization and part of that role was the very exciting Abu Dhabi Grand Prix role that I had, which was really cool.

And that role was mainly leadership and [00:20:00] operational. I was the only pharmacist employed. Um, part of the role was helping to. Change the law for the country because paramedics were unable to administer drugs on ambulances at the time they didn’t even have access to drugs. So part of the role was actually working with the medical director and the government to change law for the country, which is something that I did.

And just imagine I’m three years qualified in this job and changing law for a country. I built my own pharmacy from scratch. I designed it. I had, you know, companies come and give me quotes and I had a budget that I could use. I was importing drugs from all over the world and distributing them all over the country to ambulances.

We had helicopter service. We did the F1 project. So I went from this residency straight into that, which was completely unexpected because the job description did not say any of this. It was a bog standard pharmacy. You know, pharmacist description. And [00:21:00] the first month I had the formula one contract and had to just crack on with making that a reality, setting up a clinic, setting up a pharmacy, making sure everything’s legal, educating paramedics from all over the globe as to how we use medicines, how we prescribe, what we do with control drugs.

Cause the laws are completely different to the U S and the UK. And then I went to Cleveland Clinic because I really missed patient care. So that whole job that I had with emergency services was so operational and, you know, really good leadership position that I missed patients. And I went to Cleveland Clinic to get my exposure back.

And when I moved back to the UK, I wanted to continue on that journey. And I actually reached out to my old employer in Oxford. And I just said, Hey, I’m moving back. I really don’t know what I’m going to be doing. I’m going to be living close by. Do you have any opportunities for me to work part time? And you know, I’ve got a child now I’m dealing with, you know, daycare.

I don’t know what hours I’m going to be working. [00:22:00] And my old manager was like, yep, I have the funds come and work wherever you want, whatever ward that you want to work on, whatever hours that you want. We’d absolutely love to have you. So I work three days a week at the hospital. And in the meantime, I was looking for other opportunities and there was this really cool opportunity to cover a maternity leave, um, which is now a maternity leave of a really good friend of mine who, um, we’ve really developed an amazing relationship with, and she was covering.

The kind of educational services for interns who qualify from pharmacy school and they do that one year internship year before they actually become qualified pharmacists. And so the educational program, and when I worked in Abu Dhabi in my leadership role, I did a lot of education and training to paramedics to get them onboarded.

We were hiring. Paramedics from all over the world, all of them were used to different laws, different drugs, different rules. [00:23:00] And I just created this really cool educational onboarding program for pharmacy. And I used the skills from that role and sold those skills in the interview and landed myself a really cool educational position.

So I was part time working in hospital again, getting used to my kind of clinical role in the NHS, part time working in education. Two completely different hospitals. So I was kind of hustling, but I wanted to get used to life back in the UK and just figure out where I was going. And I was winging it at that point.

And I did that for a year. And at the end of that year, my, during my exposure in that hospital, I got to cover the neonatal ward and do a little bit of pediatrics just to help out. And part of the beauty of working in the UK is that if you. Have pharmacist general skills and you’ve, you know, you can, you’ve, you’ve got the confidence to go onto a [00:24:00] pediatric ward and you know, when you’ve rotated to different specialist areas, you’ve got that kind of clinical knowledge.

If someone needs help and you’re offering it generally, if, if they obviously trust what you’re doing, they’ll allow you to go and work on that ward. And I just offered to help out. You don’t have to have like a PGY1 residency in pediatrics to go and work on that ward. And that’s one of the beauties, like, the experience of working in the UK and just having exposure to lots of different areas, like, you are allowed to actually move to different specialist areas with ease, unlike the US, which is a little bit more difficult and a little bit more constrained, I would say.

So I did some neonatal cover and I fell in love, Tim. Like, I I just, I was a mother, you know, working with these tiny humans, like doing all the pharmacokinetics and the calculations. And the main thing was that the relationship with the physicians who worked with me in pediatrics was so different to working at adults, the [00:25:00] respect and the value.

With the relationship between pediatric pharmacists and doctors was so connected that I fell in love with that area of expertise. And right then a job came up another maternity leave cover, a one year contract to go and work in central London at a specialist. Pediatric hospital. So covering pediatrics in general for three days a week, and then teaching in a pharmacy school two days a week.

So my education hat and experience and my pediatric experience, it was that interview, I smashed it because I used all of my transferable skills from all of my previous opportunities. And I said to them. If you’re into interviewing lots of other pediatric pharmacists, you’ve got five, 10 years of experience.

Amazing. But this is what I can bring to your team. And I can learn with pharmacy. You can learn anything. If you put your mind to it, if you give it the time, if you give [00:26:00] it the love and you’ve got enthusiasm, you can learn. And I said, you can’t just put me into. You know, renal transplant and just expect me to crack on with it.

But if you treat me like a rotational member of staff and we have a program in place where I spend a few months on each ward area in this 12 month environment, but I focus a lot on the education side of building a program here at the Evelina hospital, plus doing my two days at the university, like you’ll see a different side of.

a pharmacist and, and they, they just love that and they love the enthusiasm and they gave me the job and obviously there’s been no turning back. They built a job for me and I stayed on as a permanent member of staff and obviously my journey with paediatrics has continued ever since.

Tim Ulbrich: I’m not surprised that they built a position for you, given what I’m hearing of your mindset, your curiosity, your desire to learn. the outlook you have on [00:27:00] transferable skills. I think it’s something that we desperately need from more pharmacists in our profession. I gave a quick example, kind of from my own journey of, of really detaching from that identity of a role or a specific employer or position.

And when you think about just the experiences you’ve described, which I know given the time that we have available, there’s much, much more. I’m sure to talk about all of the skills and experiences. And when you can think. Through them in that way and then be able to articulate it and bring that to an employer and add to that this mindset.

That, Hey, I’m, I’m ready to learn. I have a habit and a hunger to learn and to grow. If you’re willing to grow with me and to provide the time and energy. It’s of no surprise to me that they, they created that position for you. And I think that education I suspect is. In part related to your entrepreneurial journey, as I think about the work that you’re doing on the podcast, and we’ll talk in a little bit as you’re mentoring other podcasters, that’s teaching [00:28:00] you’re, you’re teaching others along the way as well.

So let’s go there. As I understand, Anisha, your entrepreneurial journey. It really stems back to starting a podcast during the pandemic and we’ll link to, to the show, uh, pharmacist diaries. If people have not yet checked it out, please do. It’s an incredible resource. Anisha does a fantastic job. Uh, so I hope you’ll check it out yourself and share it with others as well.

Talk to us about the moment when you decided to start that podcast and why you felt compelled to start your own show.

Anisha Patel: So we were in the height of the pandemic. I was working a lot of shifts at the hospital, but obviously I was still teaching students remotely. And during my experience of teaching first year pharmacy students, which is the cohort that was mainly teaching at that time, I and, and bear in mind. Pharmacy in the UK, you finish high school and go straight into pharmacy.

So you don’t have, [00:29:00] you know, the undergraduate degree before. So you’re, you’re looking at really young professionals who, you know, they’re so naive and green and they, they, you know, they, they barely have it figured out and some of them don’t know why they’ve joined pharmacy school really. Because. And again, like me, they’ve just looked at what they’re good at in high school.

And if sciences have been one of their kind of like strong suits, they’ve been encouraged to go down a medical or pharmacy route. And again, like an Asian background, a lot of students from an Asian background or the international pharmacy students, their families have heavily encouraged them to go into a medical.

Or healthcare professional field and having discussions with students, just getting to know them and just engaging with them. I truly discovered their lack of understanding of what is available to them in terms of career. [00:30:00] From what they know, there’s retail pharmacy, which there’s a lot of negative hype around it.

The burnout, the chaos, it’s boring. It’s not clinical. All of these kinds of terms were coming out and it wasn’t my experience of what community pharmacy was like, but that’s what they. We’re exposed to, or what they had seen or heard from other students or other pharmacists. They were really excited about retail and hospital pharmacy and the clinical side of using their degree in a hospital setting.

And then obviously they know about industry, but they feel like industry is. Like out of reach, that maybe the top, like two or 3 percent of each class would find a role in industry and it would be so hard to get into that they don’t even really bother trying because it’s so challenging and that’s all they know.

And from a university’s perspective, We are also chained. I, I genuinely, we are chained to the [00:31:00] traditional roles where we’re not looking outside of the box and thinking about all the different things that are actually happening in pharmacy. And every year there’s like a careers fair where employers come and students can come and talk to those employers.

But what you get out of that interaction between a student and, and, you know, an employer. Within an hour, most of the students come for free pizza and, and free food, and they have a mingle and then they leave. They don’t really gain that much knowledge or understanding or education or inspiration.

They’re not motivated to go and apply for a job in that location. And I really wanted to connect with my students on a deeper level and help them. And that podcast was just one of those light bulb moments where I thought a lot of my students commute, they live in central London, like New York city.

Super expensive to live in the city. They all live at home with their parents and they travel on the train like one hour to come to [00:32:00] university every day. That’s their routine. So I know they have phones in their laps or iPads. They have headphones in what could they be doing every single day to educate themselves about their pharmacy career, where they could find inspiration, motivation, and where they would get exposed to things that they wouldn’t necessarily see as a student on a day to day basis.

And when I thought about a podcast, I started looking out. On Spotify and Apple. Like what is that? You know, I typed in pharmacy into the search criteria and nothing came up. And I thought, Oh my God, this is a gold mine. Like I need to create something and I need to do it quick and I need to just, just try it like this, even if one student listens to me and is motivated or inspired, I’m going to be happy.

And I started having connections with pharmacists. You know, from all over the globe through social media. And at that time it was mainly [00:33:00] Instagram and also people that I knew. I felt comfortable interviewing people that I already knew, friends of mine. And then I got this itch to kind of interact with people that I would never meet and I found them on social media and I started DMing people and saying, actually, yeah, I’m starting this podcast.

Would you mind coming on to my show? And everyone was saying, yes. Um, and it just snowballed from there within the first year there was 10, 000 downloads and I did nothing but just sort of organic growth, social media, talking about it all the time. And in that first year in 2020, not many pharmacists even knew what a podcast was.

I was downloading Spotify for people on their phones back then. They were like, what do you mean? You’ve got a podcast, like, and I can. You know, listen to you in my headphones. They were so confused about that. And so I started off as audio. It was a great way to connect with people during the pandemic.

Cause we [00:34:00] weren’t having any interaction with people, but each person started then recommending someone else like, Oh, I have another friend who’s got a really unique career story. Maybe you should connect with them. Here’s the email address. Connect with them on social media. I’ll make a recommendation.

And that just snowballed into, you know, one episode to another. And here we are face to face episodes, have a mini studio at home. I’ve got my husband on board. I’m like touring around different places in the country, recording face to face episodes and 175 episodes later. And. A lot of downloads, 125 countries listening in, a YouTube channel.

It’s changed my life, Tim. It’s literally changed my life.

Tim Ulbrich: we’ll link in the show notes. So the, the YouTube link, uh, I, I think you’ve got to watch the YouTube, uh, cause you, you’re a great interviewer and I, I’ve often said Anisha that what our profession is lacking is. [00:35:00] A representation of the incredible stories of the impact that pharmacists are having every day in all these different roles, because the negativity, while warranted in many areas is so loud and amplified that we’re not hearing the stories that I know are happening every single day and your show is doing that you’re, you’re, you’re, you’re showing the diversity of roles that are out there that pharmacists can employ in a lot of different ways.

And I would guess you would say, if you feel like. Me and Nisha, one of the greatest benefits of podcasting I never thought about on the front end is just the amazing people that you get to meet and the networking that happens and the shared learning that happens when you’re doing 175 interviews like you’ve done, not only are you able to bring these stories out to people in a way that they weren’t Accessible before you started it, but you’ve now built some incredible relationships, I would presume over all of these [00:36:00] interviews that you’ve had along the way as well,

Anisha Patel: I wouldn’t have met you. I wouldn’t

Tim Ulbrich: which is wild.

Right. I mean, and, and the same. Yeah. Yeah.

Anisha Patel: Because I wouldn’t have needed to use LinkedIn. I wouldn’t, to the extent that I’m using it, I wouldn’t have come across. The, the YFP podcast. And I, during my search for pharmacist diaries, potentially a little bit before that I did find you. I was actually, no, I did find you before.

Cause when I was pregnant, I started listening to your podcast episodes. You were the first pharmacy podcast I ever listened to. And this is like seven, eight years ago now. And. It was quite exciting to, to listen and get that insight of these amazing stories of people like paying off their incredible amounts of debt from us pharmacy school and yeah, yeah, it was crazy.

And I was like, wow, but these stories are amazing and it was just really inspiring to learn about all these different pharmacists. The connections that I make [00:37:00] with people are genuine friendships and their lifelong friendships. And the reason why is because my podcast is not a traditional pharmacy podcast.

I’m not interviewing people like a Q and a session, which you will find in a lot of sort of podcasts that are. within the pharmacy space, this is a really intimate, deep dive into someone’s life where you will learn so many things about them that are non pharmacy related, whether that’s, you know, stress or they’ve gone through anxiety or mental health issues.

You know, some women have talked about miscarriages and how that’s impacted their life. How do you hustle as a parent with, you know, two, three kids and, and still have an amazing pharmacy degree, um, or a pharmacy career and going into entrepreneurship and all of these incredible stories have come out and.

The friendships have been amazing and I’m meeting people, especially in the UK on a regular basis, just to connect for coffee. And none of those interactions would happen [00:38:00] without the podcast. But another beauty from being a podcaster is that the opportunities that have come from that unexpectedly have changed my life.

And they’ve given me this sort of spark. For entrepreneurship and they’ve given me this motivation and drive to say that I don’t need to be an employee for the rest of my life. I’ve got control over this podcast, how many episodes I do, who I talk to, the way I speak to them, the content that gets delivered, the questions that I ask.

I’m not being controlled. And as an employee. I’ve been controlled for the last 14 years and I just thought this is normal life, right? But now I’ve been exposed to doing things my own way, working in the style that I like, the time that I want, making the connections with people in, you know, a non [00:39:00] scripted way has just given me this spark of, wow.

I can do so much more with this. And because I’ve been making connections with companies like pharmaceutical companies who have looked at my skillset and valued what I’m delivering on a camera and through video content, through social media, and it’s nothing to do with the. Pharmacy career aspect, it’s the fact that I can deliver information through video, that they’ve invited me to come to another country, either to speak at a conference or create educational videos for other pharmacists in other countries on topics, by the way, that I am not an expert. It is the delivery of the information and the way that you project yourself on camera that they. Need and that they want someone who’s got that confidence and charisma and energy and enthusiasm and excitement to [00:40:00] be on video camera, that’s what they see. And they really value that. And that, again, that skill has only come from practice because it’s not something I’m naturally good at.

It’s something that has come from. 175 episodes and putting in the work and the dedication and the consistency every single week for the last nearly five years.

Tim Ulbrich: Yeah. I think you just nailed it there. Right. When you’re doing something 175 times and you’re practicing the skills. And your preparation and your delivery and how do you succinctly communicate information? How do you effectively tell a story? How do you make someone comfortable in an environment that they’re willing to share and be vulnerable in a way that can help other people in their own journey.

You don’t just wake up and do that. I mean, I guess some people maybe have that natural gift, but you’ve practiced a lot and you’ve put in a ton of work. And I think as people hear you talking about the benefits of podcasting, I know there’s many people out there, pharmacists or non pharmacists are listening, saying.

Well, maybe I have something to [00:41:00] share, and that’s one of the beauties of living in 2025 is for better or for worse, you can put out content, right? Uh, whether it’s YouTube, whether it’s podcast, social media, all the above, and that’s why I love what you’re doing now, taking your experience as Anisha, and you’re now helping others.

Through a mentorship program called Behind the Mic. Again, we’ll link to that in the show notes. But taking all of what you’ve learned, yes. Some of the technical aspects, but aspects, but so much more and helping mentor others through this journey that wanna get a podcast started. Tell us about that offering, what you’re doing, what you’re trying to accomplish through that

Anisha Patel: So at the moment, I really love the idea of working one on one with individuals and being what feels like quite an early entrepreneur, I feel like I’m still figuring things out. I’ve considered whether or not I develop a course that would be something that someone could sign up to and, you know. Work through [00:42:00] at their own pace, but then I also considered like a group coaching program, but the one to one coaching really just spoke to me and it’s the connection that I’m craving.

It’s that deep dive that I want with an individual and it’s, it’s the relationship that I want to build with them. And part of that is just seeing them develop and thrive and. Their entire career could transform with the support of myself and my husband, who’s my secret weapon, the tech guru behind everything.

So in terms of the, the mentoring, he’s supporting with everything tech related. And even though I have some skillset, he’s an absolute genius and he can simplify things and make it easy. To reduce the overwhelm when it comes to the tech, because that is something that people struggle with. Right. And even though they have amazing experience, they’ve got incredible clinical knowledge.

They’ve got a voice [00:43:00] where they want to share their stories or their education, or that, you know, the inspiration to do different things through a podcast. They’re afraid of. The tech and I get that. So, you know, he is my secret weapon and it’s great that we, again, working together as a couple has been amazing.

We’ve absolutely loved working together as a couple and it’s just this two passions come together and it’s something that we’ve kind of had as passion projects individually, and now we’ve. Combined forces, which has been so much fun for us. And the idea, when you look at your life values, because at the end of the day, like now I’ve discovered that I don’t necessarily need a nine to five for the rest of my life and being chained to a hospital environment, which is what I kind of expected that I would be doing until I retire. I now realize that there is this sort of vision that I could live anywhere in the world. [00:44:00] I could have a digital business where I could educate, mentor and support pharmacists or healthcare professionals to start a podcast and become a thought leader on a global scale, not just to their patients in their clinic who could use, you know, advice on.

Say HIV medications and all the side effects and all the things that you could teach them that you don’t have time to do within your clinic, but you could reach people all over the world with that topic as an example and being a thought leader on social media, such as linked in that. You know, your life could be transformed and then partnerships with brands could come with that.

You could start speaking for pharmaceutical companies and you could create this quite incredible side hustle alongside your very clinical job, which is exactly what’s happened to me. But for me, it’s the idea that I can transition to full time entrepreneurship. I can spend more time [00:45:00] with my children. I can choose my hours.

I have the power to then, what I do right now is batch record lots of episodes. So. You know, I try to record 10 episodes or 12 episodes at a time across two to three days, and then I’ve got enough content for like three months. So in the background, we, we can get on with the editing and the social media, but the hardest part, the recording element is done in bulk and then everything else that kind of happens in the background and once.

You know, I’m earning enough money. I can, I can obviously outsource the editing to somebody else and reduce the burden. So I just need to focus on hosting the podcast and I can obviously outsource some other elements. Or if I want to get a virtual assistant, I know I can get help with some of the scheduling and the, you know, connections made with individuals who I might want to invite onto the podcast.

And all of that can be done digitally. And that for me is something [00:46:00] that really excites me because I want to be able to adventure with my children and with my family. I want to be able to explore the world with them and I don’t want to be tied down to one location. It’s something that has been ingrained into me since childhood.

My dad’s from Kenya. My mom’s from Uganda and I spent the first four years of my life in Kenya. And then from the age of six onwards, every summer holiday, my dad would send me and my brother on a plane to Mombasa in Kenya, uh, on our own. And that was the days when, you know, You know, flight attendants would basically look after you.

They’d upgrade you to first class and look after you. And my grandparents would be at the end kind of waiting for us. And they would even be able to walk up to the plane to pick us up. And all summer I would be like Mowgli from Jungle Book. I would just be exploring in Masai Mara, going on safaris, like going, you know, adventuring on the beach.

And when I think of that childhood and [00:47:00] what it gave me. I’m absolutely craving being able to give that back to my children. And every time I go on holiday with my kids, it’s like, I want to be able to spend more time doing that. And that’s why I have this really sort of like big mission now to work towards that goal.

And the podcast has given me the drive to do it. And I never knew it was possible. And. Yeah, I’m making a reality.

Tim Ulbrich: What you’re sharing, Anisha, reminds me, I suspect many of our listeners have read, uh, Simon Sinek’s Start With Why, and One of the concepts she talks about in that book, great book, but it’s one of those books like I constantly go back to in reference is if you think about three circles overlapping at the center of the three circles is the why, and then you move out to the how, and then you move out to the what, and we often spend so much of our time in the periphery.

Of the what of the everything the [00:48:00] things we do every day, right? We go to work. We spend time we do family activity. We do these things with little regard for what’s the why at the core of why we’re of the activities that we’re doing. And is that why? Is it strong? Is it clear? And is it the guiding star?

Is it the path for why we’re doing these things? If not, what we’ll feel is some of that misalignment, whether we can articulate it or not. Something just won’t feel right, that we’re kind of running down this path, but we’re not sure. Why are we on this path and where are we going? And what I just heard, and why I know you’re going to be very successful in the future, is there’s a strong why, and there’s a strong core and a motivation for you individually, for you professionally, but for your family as a whole.

And I, I think I was sharing with you last week when we met that we, we tend to try to separate out these personal and professional goals. And I’m a big believer that when the intersection of those come together and we can build our professional lives in a way that supports our personal [00:49:00] lives, and we’re not trying to live in these two different worlds, things really start to become a lot easier because we’re not.

in this multi identity state of mind. And when you talk about the vision that you have for building this business and being a traveling entrepreneur and what that means for your family and why that’s of value to your family, and then how can the business support doing that, that is going to be a really strong.

North stars. You’re going for it. The other things I’ve heard throughout this interview. You have an obvious curiosity and desire to grow and learn. That’s going to carry you leaps and bounds, a strong desire to help others. And the other piece that I want to highlight for our listeners is there’s a mindset piece here that is so important.

Because many pharmacists, and I’m speaking to my, my former self in part, many pharmacists live in this mindset where they put a ceiling on themselves and what is possible. And I think this comes in part from our training when you’re 18, years [00:50:00] old, and You’re obtaining a doctorate degree or an advanced professional degree, and you’re told you’re going to make a great income.

We start to build these ceilings in our minds that growing outside of that is hard to see. And when you talk about the future of what you’re building and what that might mean, in terms of time flexibility and financial flexibility, when you begin to lift off those ceilings, a whole new world is out there.

And the visual that comes to mind is like the ceilings been lifted. The curiosity is there and you’re now kind of crawling around like finding, Whoa, where can this go? Like, where can this go? Where can that go? And what does this look like going forward? It’s a, it’s a beautiful image and I’m excited for, for, for where things go in the future.

Anisha Patel: Yeah, me too. I’m so excited. And I’m in this incredible transition phase.

Tim Ulbrich: Hmm. Mm

Anisha Patel: just to highlight to your listeners, I’m still working as clinical pharmacist four days a week. And I’ve dedicated [00:51:00] one day a week, by the way, isn’t a full day. It’s 9am to 3pm, which is school hours. So six hours per week on the podcast.

And then I’m still hustling evenings and weekends. Doing stuff for the podcast and the business and the four days that I work as a clinical pharmacist, I’m still doing pediatrics. I’m still doing some education, but the hospital have been so kind to give me super flexible hours. I’m working at my local hospital instead of in central London.

So it’s. A 20 minute drive, or I can cycle if I really want to. And again, like my quality of life has changed instead of the three hour commute into London, um, or three hours in total of travel time is what I did for five years with one child, then a pregnancy, then, you know, I did a master’s degree. I then went back to work when my son was four months old, completely sleep deprived and, you know, really trying to hustle doing the podcast, plus being a great pharmacist, [00:52:00] plus being a great educator.

And the mindset shift that I needed to quit that job was. I mean, I did an episode on it saying I quit my job and it’s an amazing emotional episode where I really dive into exactly how I feel. And part of that, like you said, is we’re just like, we’re just trained to like. Believe certain things as pharmacists and my mindset has been so closed and I found it hard to let go of that clinical job because I genuinely feel less of a pharmacist if I’m not in the hospital, which is crazy.

And it’s something that I’m really truly having to work on now, but the shift from permanent to PRN job has been a massive. change for me. I’m now no longer responsible for a team. You know, I’m not really doing palliative care anymore, which was my area of expertise and my true [00:53:00] love in pediatrics. I’m covering general pediatrics and a very small neonatal unit, but I’m still providing a lot of value and I still love it.

I’m still seeing patients every day and enjoying it. But one of the biggest transitions that you are aware of, but your listeners don’t know is that we made the decision to sell our house.

Tim Ulbrich: Mm-hmm

Anisha Patel: And one of the massive kind of steps that I’m trying to make is that I want to be mortgage free. And we’ve realized that we have a beautiful home and we absolutely love it.

But in this massive transition phase of, you know, having a pregnancy, a second child, um, we renewed our mortgage and the interest rates were originally sort of 1%. And at the back end of COVID, the English interest rates Went to probably 5%,

Tim Ulbrich: Mm-hmm

Anisha Patel: so my mortgage doubled and this is while I’m on maternity leave getting no pay.

And then I had to send my son [00:54:00] to kind of daycare full time at the age of four or five months old, go back to work and spend 2, 000 a month on top of that doubled mortgage just to send him to childcare. And that I’ve been doing for the last two and a half years. And every single day that I go to work, every single penny and more is just going back into the system to survive.

And we’ve realized as a family that we don’t need a lot of the space that we have at this point. And because our mission is to be able to travel and go on all these adventures, we’ve, we, we just decided that actually a smaller space would be much nicer for us, and we’ve bought this. Beautiful little English cottage.

And if anyone’s seen the movie, The Holiday, it’s kind of like that house, but a little bit bigger cause that’s tiny and we’re a family of four,

Tim Ulbrich: Mm-hmm

Anisha Patel: but it’s got the fireplace and it’s just beautiful on the outside and you’re, you’re right in the middle of nowhere. There’s hardly anything [00:55:00] around. The only thing that we have is one tiny shop in the village and there’s, you know, you have to drive miles basically to, to.

See other, a lot of other people and a lot of coffee shops and stores and stuff. And obviously that’s all happening in the background at the moment. And we’re very hopeful that we will be mortgage free in the next year. I would say maybe less if I’m really hopeful. I’ve got a plan to speak to a financial advisor in the next couple of months.

So we can really dive deep into what our finances are going to look like. And then I know. That I can cut down my hours at the hospital and really go all in for pharmacist diaries, because right now I’m trapped. I am truly, I’ve been hustling for five years, working full time, plus doing the podcast.

evenings and weekends and during my kids nap times. I’ve now dedicated my, you know, Mondays to podcasting. And that is amazing [00:56:00] and has done really well now for a year, but it’s just not enough because there’s so much that I want to achieve. There’s so much that I want to be able to do. And I’m in this sort of trap of not really generating enough revenue yet to outsource.

Tim Ulbrich: Mm-hmm

Anisha Patel: At the same time, a lot of the income I’m generating is actually going back into my bill still. And until I have that opportunity to reduce that mortgage, reduce the kind of child care fees. And luckily at the age of three, you, the government do give you support. So you get 30 hours of free childcare. So that’s coming.

That’s coming in September and I cannot wait because that’s really going to shift things for us. So 2025 is going to be, I mean, so many beautiful things are going to unfold for me that I’m really excited about, but at the same time I’m building this like mentoring and coaching business. And obviously I have a goal to work with a few clients and again, that.

in itself is going to make a massive shift [00:57:00] a to my joy factor but also it’s allowing me to then cut back on my traditional job.

Tim Ulbrich: I know our U. S. listeners are saying, what the hell? I wish we got support at three years old. Uh, but no, I mean, the, the, the child care costs are really, it’s one of the things I shared with you before in the work that we do here at Y. F. P. you know, housing costs, child care costs, student loans. And transportation, you know, you put those things together and one of the things I hear on repeat Anisha is I make a great income, but I feel stuck your words, or I feel like I’m not progressing financially.

Someone looks up 10, 15, 20 years into their career. They’ve earned well north of 1 to 2 million without a whole lot to show in terms of progress because of those large fixed costs. So I love your story. An example of. When we’re clear on what it means to be living the rich life and the vision that we have for our family, that can inform some of these decisions and [00:58:00] potential sacrifices we’re willing to make in the financial plan to create some breathing room and space to be able to then pursue these other things, right?

Because otherwise, It’s that feeling of stuck. It’s that feeling of, you know, money in, money out, and I’m so excited to see where things go for you in 2025 and beyond, because I think with that breathing room, with the additional creative capacity, with the time that will be spent there, I think there’s going to be some incredible momentum and progress that’s ahead.

So that’s going to be fun to watch. And the example with the home is just such a good one of why, you know, The financial plan. Yes, it’s about the numbers, but it’s about what is the vision that we have for living this rich life. We often say today and thinking about tomorrow as well. Let me wrap up with this question.

It’s kind of a big one, but I’m curious. I do an exercise every morning where I write. It’s about 10 years into the future, so the date in particular, if anyone’s curious, it’s February 15, 2034 and on February 15, [00:59:00] 2034, I’m going to turn 50, so I write out this 10 year vision of, you know, what, what, what, what’s going to be happening in 10 years.

And so my challenge for you, and I’d love to hear selfishly, and he says, you think out 10 years. What does this look like for you in terms of your family? Uh, you’ve got what at that point, some teenagers, I think, right? Um, your, your family, the business, where you’re traveling, what you’re doing. Paint that picture for us 10 years down the road.

Anisha Patel: One thing that I would say about pharmacist diaries that I’ve discovered in this journey is that it’s pure passion and I don’t want that to go away because I’ve realized when you fall in love with something it never feels like work. Like here I am it’s 9 p. m. I should be going to bed right now, but here I am speaking to you because I’m, I’m so passionate. I’m so passionate about what I’m doing, being able to share my [01:00:00] story, genuinely have a conversation with you. It’s fun for me. So. It’s about making that connection with you as well and being, you know, part of your journey as well.

Tim Ulbrich: Mm hmm.

Anisha Patel: And what I see for the future is that like that financial freedom element is, is a massive part of my life.

I don’t want to have like a mortgage to be paying or, or kind of rent to be worrying about. I want to be, you know, financially free and comfortable. And I’m not talking about making millions here. Like, I really. Do not care about making millions. I’m talking about Just being comfortable and just not worrying because right now one of the things is that every month I am kind of worrying about like paying my bills and having extortionate outgoings It stresses me out and I want to remove that from my life.

But what I visualize Is a couple of things I’ve always wanted to go back [01:01:00] to kenya because it’s where I’ve spent a lot of my time and I really would love to like manage, um, an amazing camp in Masai Mara as an example where I’m actually running my own sort of holiday camp or hotel or, or lodge where people come and go on safaris and have this incredible journey.

But not only is it just managing that, um, it’s having people come and enjoy the safari element, but also the wellbeing element. So looking at kind of doing yoga retreats and kind of the mindfulness and the meditation and just enjoying being part of that and just being immersed in nature with nothing else.

Like I would love a life without internet and just being immersed. With pure nature animals and my children, ideally, I would really like to adopt a child in the future and having the finances would be really valuable to be able to do [01:02:00] that. Because again, like I’m thinking about if I’m growing my family, I did really struggle from one child to two financially.

I found that really hard and I wasn’t quite. as prepared as I should have been and I’m learning how to figure that out. But if I want to have a third child, which I do, and if Sanjay listens to this, he’ll be probably surprised to hear it. But I would love to adopt a child and it’s not that I can’t have my own.

It’s just that I really want Um, I would love to be able to adopt a child who doesn’t necessarily have a family and, you know, have them as part of mine. It’s been a dream of mine for actually a really, really long time. And I would like that to become a reality. And I would really like to be spending more time with my, obviously my children and my family, but from a pharmacy point of view.

What I visualize is that this podcast is still going to exist and I will be traveling around the world, adventuring with my family, but also recording face to face episodes with pharmacists from [01:03:00] all over the world. Yeah, like that and making money from that, obviously, whether it’s sponsorships, whether it’s affiliates.

And again, like you can hear that it’s all digital. I don’t need to be in one location to earn that money. And that is so important to me because I just want to be free to like, do whatever I want and be wherever I want and stay in Bali for a month or go to Kenya and do this amazing adventure or, you know, volunteer.

I want to volunteer at places. I want to go to like an, I don’t know. Somewhere where they look after animals, whether it’s elephants or, you know, orphanages for children and actually give back to society and, and do my part. Um, because at the moment I just feel like all I’m doing is work, working to, to live.

And I want that to flip. I need that to flip and I’m on this mission to make it happen.

Tim Ulbrich: the vision is strong and the energy behind the, the vision is contagious. [01:04:00] And, uh, I mean, that whole heart, this is why Anisha, we, we do, when we walk our clients through the financial plan, the very first thing we do, we call it, get organized. You have to have all of your documents information. We got to know what the balance sheet is.

What are we working with as painful as that can be? Sometimes step two, before we do anything else, we call script your plan. And what we say is we need to cast a vision. We need to light a torch that is going to get you excited every single day. And then we develop the financial plan, but the torch, it’s the guide.

It’s the vision for the financial plan. And I want people that are listening, go back to listen the last three to five minutes of what Anisha said, because that’s the kind of vision that you have to cast one that is going to be energizing. It’s contagious to your family and to others around you. And then when you’re making decisions about a home purchase or paying down debt or any of these.

What can be sometimes monotonous and grinding decisions financially. [01:05:00] There’s a vision that’s behind all of that. And that vision has to be compelling. And I love how compelling. The vision is that you created. 

Anisha, as we wrap up here, where’s the best place for our listeners to go to be able to follow your journey and, and learn more about the work that you’re doing

Anisha Patel: So I spend most of my time on LinkedIn. I absolutely love that platform. So feel free to connect with me and DM me if you’re really interested in saying hello, I’d absolutely love to hear from you. Of course I spend time on YouTube and I would love for you to subscribe to the YouTube channel and comment on any videos.

And if you’d like to email me, um, feel free. It’s info at pharmacistdiaries. com.

Tim Ulbrich: great. We’ll link to all that in the show notes, uh, the pharmacist diary show, your email address, your LinkedIn profile, the mentoring program for the podcasting. So again, thank you so much for your time. Uh, this really has been a treat for me. I appreciate it.

Anisha Patel: You’re welcome. Thank you.[01:06:00] [01:07:00] [01:08:00] [01:09:00] [01:10:00] 

[END]

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YFP 399: From Pre-Approval to Closing: Understanding the Mortgage Process (and Common Mistakes to Avoid)


Tim Ulbrich, YFP Co-Founder is joined by mortgage loan officer Tony Umholtz to discuss the mortgage process. They break down key steps, from getting pre-approved to closing, highlighting important considerations and common mistakes to avoid when buying a home.

This episode is brought to you by First Horizon.

Episode Summary

In this episode, Tim Ulbrich, YFP Co-Founder and CEO is joined by Tony Umholtz, a mortgage loan officer with First Horizon Bank as they break down one of the biggest financial commitments you’ll ever make—buying a home.

Taking out a mortgage is a massive financial decision, one that can impact your life for decades. From getting pre-approved to signing those final papers at closing, there’s a lot to consider—and a lot of mistakes to avoid.

Tim and Tony walk listeners through the mortgage process step by step. They  cover what you need to know before getting pre-approved, how the bank sets your max loan amount, and how to avoid common pitfalls throughout the process.

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

  • [00:00] Welcome and Market Overview
  • [00:58] Current Market Conditions and Predictions
  • [01:20] Impact of Inflation and Unemployment on Interest Rates
  • [02:23] Regional Market Fragmentation
  • [03:15] Affordability Challenges for First-Time Homebuyers
  • [04:03] Understanding Your Budget and Financial Plan
  • [05:17] Lender’s Perspective on Affordability
  • [06:46] Debt-to-Income Ratio Explained
  • [09:27] Student Loans and Mortgage Affordability
  • [14:06] Importance of Credit Scores in Mortgage Lending
  • [19:29] Pre-Approval vs. Pre-Qualification
  • [23:41] Common Mistakes in the Lending Process
  • [28:18] Understanding Self-Employed Income for Loans
  • [30:31] Importance of Early Communication with Lenders
  • [32:05] Navigating Loan Options and Interest Rates
  • [39:55] The Pharmacist Home Loan Product
  • [43:21] Behind the Scenes: From Contract to Closing
  • [55:09] Final Thoughts and Resources for Homebuyers

Episode Highlights

“ We need to stop bemoaning the interest rates of 2020, 2021. Those days are gone. If those days come back, there’s going to be an opportunity to refinance, but we’ve got this new reality in front of us.” – Tim Ulbrich [3:04]

“ Banks and lenders have to show that the borrower has the ability to repay, and there’s certain documentation that’s required as a result of that.” – Tony Umholtz [05:41]

“ People don’t always realize that too. If one spouse or co borrower has lower credit scores that can influence the loan pricing.” – Tony Umholtz [09:12]

“ Credit is critical to to all of the lending world. Income is super critical too, because you have to show the ability to repay. But a lot of programs now have minimum credit scores. So if you don’t meet that threshold, you’re not qualified.” – Tony Umholtz [14:33]

“ It’s really one of the safest times that I’ve ever seen as far as lending goes to, to buy because the regulatory environment is very consumer friendly.” – Tony Umholtz [38:50]

Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode

Episode Transcript

Tim Ulbrich: Tony, welcome back to the show.

Tony Umholtz: Tim, thanks for having me. Good to see you.

Tim Ulbrich: Good to see you as well. And as always excited to have you on as our mortgage lending expert to bring great information to our community and audience. And we’re going to talk about the A to Z of the mortgage process, uh, all the way from pre approval to closing. But before we do that, as I always do, I want to ask.

I can get your take on what the heck is going on in the market. Where are we at? And what might 2025 bring? It feels like we’ve had this conversation a few times of, Hey, rates, rates are stubborn, supply is limited. Demand is high. What, what do you see out there in the market and what’s ahead for the year?

Tony Umholtz: Yeah, all good [00:01:00] questions, Tim. It’s definitely interesting times. Um, you know, a lot going on, different markets can vary a little bit, you know, across the country clearly, but we are seeing more inventory. So that’s the good news for buyers. There’s more inventory of existing homes on the market than there’s been in some time.

So the inventory levels are increasing. I would say that one concern, you know, obviously is inflation. Inflation is It has yet to be completely beaten in the fed’s eyes, right? So I think I think we’re going to see inflation ease down probably in the coming months because Year over year inflation it reports will factor in some lower months You know april may june of last year into the annual figures and I think you’re going to see That inflation rate come down also got to watch the unemployment rate too.

Cause the unemployment rate is near all time lows, but I think that could tick up a little higher. [00:02:00] And if that does even just fractionally, that can help with interest rates. So I do think there’s a chance rates could be a little bit better in the next six months. But I wouldn’t bet on like a really seeing anything like the 2021 or 2020, but overall, the economy is pretty healthy.

There’s just risks to watch. And I think rate wise, it’s inflation. And, um, you know, but then there’s some areas that have been hit, you know, obviously, L. A. with the fires, right, Florida with the hurricanes, housing markets. Are affected by that. And, you know, we see I’m based in Florida and we can see like this fragmented market where certain areas that weren’t affected by flooding have, you know, all time highs in prices were issues along the coast are, you know, some of those homes have been hit pretty hard and the values are down, probably an opportunity in the long run, but it’s just there is some fragmentation to the housing market.

But overall, I would say, um, you know, [00:03:00] inventory levels being higher is going to help buyers.

Tim Ulbrich: That’s good to hear. And I, I think we need to stop bemoaning the, uh, interest rates of 2020, 2021 and those days are gone. Right. And, you know, we, we’ve got a new reality, you know, maybe they come down slightly. If, if those days come back, there’s going to be an opportunity obviously to refinance, but we, we’ve got this new reality in front of us and Tony, what I’m hearing from a lot of pharmacists, homebuyers, especially first time homebuyers is.

You know, salaries have remained relatively flat. You know, some have seen a substantial increase. Student loan debt is still a thing very much for a lot of our audience. But the home prices and the appreciation that’s happened alongside of the interest rates that have gone up, it’s really changed the affordability question, you know, for a lot of Pharmacists, especially first time homebuyers, and for many, I think it’s changed that expectation of what might be within budget, and I want to start there as we talk about the A to Z of the process from pre approval to closing, because I [00:04:00] think first and foremost, we have to know our budget.

We have to understand that what are we able to afford and our own financial plan, and I’ll get your take in a moment here on kind of how the bank makes this determination, but it’s really up to you as the individual to determine what that is. Mortgage payment with principal interest taxes and insurance referred to as as pity works with your income, your expenses, your various goals.

Keyword being your right. Everyone’s situation is different and any mortgage calculator. And we’ve got a YFP mortgage calculator that we can link to in the show notes as well. Any mortgage calculator will ask you for inputs on what’s the target loan amount, what’s the down payment, what’s the interest rate, what’s the term, what’s the taxes, and and the insurance aspects of the buy as well.

And all of those things we have to factor into as we’re looking at how does this home purchase, how does this decision factor into the [00:05:00] broader financial plan. So Tony, I’m going to stop with my rant on, you know, how people need to be thinking about their individual purchase and how it fits into the broader context of their plan and their goals and get your take on how the lender determines what the buyer can afford.

Because early on in this process is going to come a pre approval, but before we get that pre approval, we have to understand how the bank thinks about the lending decision and what ultimately a home buyer can afford. Hmm.

Tony Umholtz: Right. That’s right. So all lenders are required to prove it’s called the ATR rule. The ability to repay pretty simple, but it’s. Banks and lenders have to show that the borrower has the ability to repay, and there’s certain documentation that’s required as a result of that. So that’s why lenders will ask for your pay stubs, tax returns if you’re self employed, bank statements, asset statements, uh, work history.

They’re required by law [00:06:00] to prove, you know, per that rule, right, the ability to repay the loan. So, I would say that, you know, you hit it on, you, you hit it right on there, Tim. I mean, you want to prove. First of all, backtrack before you go to a lender, get your own budget together. Like what can I afford? What really can I afford?

Cause the lender might be able to approve me for more than I’m willing to pay. Right. That does happen. You might have a travel budget. You might have, um, a savings goal.

Tim Ulbrich: Right. Right.

Tony Umholtz: And, and you, you come in and you say, well, wait a minute, I can qualify for the 800, 000 home, but I don’t, I don’t want that. Right.

It’s because my budget doesn’t allow that. So I think having your budget is important. I think the other thing. Us as lenders are going to look at your, your debt to income ratio. So that’s the buzzword here, debt to income ratio. So as a lender, we assess you based upon how much income to debts that [00:07:00] you have per month.

So let’s just say your income is 10, 000. Okay. That’s your gross income. And lenders always use gross income. If you’re W2, we use your gross, not your net. So that’s been a question over the years that I’ve received. And we use your gross income and let’s say your liabilities before the mortgage. Our 4, 000 a month before you get a mortgage.

Well, typically we’re not going to lend you more than a 43 percent debt to income ratio. So already right there, if you’re making, you’re paying 4, 000 a month in debt, let’s say it’s student loans. You have a couple of cars, it’s 4, 000 a month. There’s not a lot there to buy a home.

Tim Ulbrich: Mm hmm.

Tony Umholtz: that’s how lenders look at it.

It’s based upon the debt to income ratio. And that’s a simple way to illustrate it is if your gross income is 10, 000, Your liabilities are 4, 000 a month where you’re at a 40 percent debt to income ratio. Most programs are 43%. There are a few that will go up to 49 percent debt to income ratio, but [00:08:00] that’s generally where you’re going to be.

So, and that includes the new mortgage. So that’s how lenders look at you, look at you as a borrower. We have a ratio to your income to your liabilities, and that’s how we prove the ability to repay the loan.

Tim Ulbrich: So Tony, when a lender’s looking at that ability to repay the loan, the ATR rule that you mentioned, the debt to income ratio, um, inclusive of course of what that new payment will be. Is that principal and interest only? That they’re, they’re factoring in

Tony Umholtz: It’s P I T I,

Tim Ulbrich: P I T I.

Tony Umholtz: Yeah, it’s P I T I. So taxes and insurance matter as well. So it’s that whole, that’s entire collective amount. Um, so that’s, that’s how we review it. And again, it’s, and it’s all borrowers on the loan too. So if you have, um, a spouse that’s on the loan with you, obviously we use your spouse’s income as well.

So it would be collective income, you know, or if you have a co borrower, uh, it’d be collective income. So that’s how, it’s one way. Folks are able to qualify for more, [00:09:00] um,

Tim Ulbrich: too, right?

Tony Umholtz: debt as well. That’s right. That’s right. But, um, you got to remember that too. It’s true. Uh, it is collective debt and it’s collective credit scores.

People don’t always realize that too. If one spouse or co borrower has lower credit scores that can influence the loan pricing. Um, so that’s something to keep in mind too. Even if the other borrower, the main primary borrower has better credit.

Tim Ulbrich: have a question about credit that I want to come back to here in a moment, but I want to first tackle what I’m guessing many of our listeners are thinking as they hear you talk about the ability to repay rule and the debt to income ratio, which is my student loans, right? You know, we certainly do have people that may have some credit card debt.

Some car debt, um, other debt that may, may be hanging around as well. But student loans tends to be the grill in the room when we think of many pharmacists, especially first time homebuyers. Uh, we might have some listening that are thinking about a homebuyer that’s not the first time and maybe the student loans are [00:10:00] gone.

And certainly that would free up some things on the debt to income ratio. But if we think of a traditional pharmacy graduate coming out with 170, in student loans, Depending on their loan repayment plan, that can be a sizable monthly payment. So if you put that debt on a standard 10 year repayment, you’re talking about 1, 900 to 2, 000 a month.

On the other hand, you might have somebody that, you know, is looking at an income driven repayment plan and they’re, they’re really optimizing the calculation and they’ve got that down substantially, 700 a month. Wow, that can have a big impact. Tony on how that gets factored in. So given all the uncertainty right now about student loans and what’s happening and people that are on, uh, pauses because of the uncertainty with the save plan, how are lenders thinking about.

Student loans. Are they applying a generic calculation or are they getting to the level of detail of, Hey, this person’s on a standard repayment. This person’s on an income [00:11:00] driven repayment.

Tony Umholtz: Yeah, it’s a great question, Tim. So I, so a couple of things, uh, the, the first thing is most clients that come to us are already kind of ahead of the game. They have one of those two options. I find the income based repayment plan is what we like to see, right? That’s what normally is what I see. Um, because.

The, the, the payment is then gives them the ability to borrow more and buy a home, um, or pay rent or whatever it might be. Um, so normally we see that income based repayment and that’s what we encourage everyone to go to if we can. Um, there is a factor though for those that aren’t quite set up. There is a factor that we have on some of our programs that takes a factor of the loans.

So like, for example. One of our products is at half percent of the balances per month. So for, if you had a, um, a hundred, a hundred thousand dollar loan, that would be a 500 a month payment, right? [00:12:00] Where Fannie Freddie are typically 1 percent month

Tim Ulbrich: got it.

Tony Umholtz: conventional loans or FHA. So there’s some products out there that can give you a little bit more flexibility.

Um, which is, is needed a lot of times in with your clients, uh, in, you know, the audience. But, um, I find that the income based, I would encourage everyone if they can, if they have that option, the income based repayment is going to give you the most flexibility and allow you to have the, you know, kind of the best approach to, to, uh, financing a big purchase like a home.

Um, because if you have that 10 year, you know, like you said, 1, 900 a month versus maybe 500 a month really locks you in. You know, it doesn’t give you a lot of capacity to borrow.

Tim Ulbrich: You know, it’s interesting. There’s a lot of strategy here. And, you know, I’m thinking about more of the work that our planning team does where not Anyone decisions in a style. This is a great example where if you’ve got student loans that you’re paying off And you’re thinking about buying a home [00:13:00] You can’t look at those as independent variables and and of course there’s many other parts of the plan as well But knowing the debt to income ratio is based on gross income I’m specifically thinking about our folks that work in the non profit Sector that might be pursuing something like a public service loan forgiveness strategy that are on an income driven repayment plan and are optimizing that plan Not advice, but just kind of talking about how the calculations work and they’re optimizing that plan.

By really making contributions to, you know, traditional 401k’s or traditional 403b’s that might be making HSA contributions, other types of things where they’re reducing what that monthly payment will be, um, through the calculations of the income driven repayment plan, all the while making their debt to income ratio, you know, more favorable.

And of course, having you. More loans that would be forgiven and ideally forgiven tax free. So just a great example where, Hey, if I’ve got student loans and I’m going down this pathway, this strategy, and I’m also thinking about buying a home, we got to bring these two discussions [00:14:00] together and figure out how the different Uh, pieces of the puzzle ultimately work, work together.

So credit, I want to come back to my credit question, Tony, what role does a credit score play in getting a mortgage? I think the obvious being of course, better credit is, is going to be more, more favorable lending terms, but for our listeners that especially are going through this for the first time, like how much does credit matter when it comes to not only getting approved, but getting the best products at the best rate.

Tony Umholtz: right? Well credit is critical to to all of the lending world uh Obviously income is is super critical too because you have to show the ability to repay But a lot of programs now tim they have minimum credit scores. So if you don’t meet that threshold, you’re not qualified so, um Uh, and like us as an institution, as a bank, we have a minimum credit score, uh, depending on the products, you know, [00:15:00] some are lower than others, uh, but, but credit scores matter to rates as well, right?

Big, it’s a big influence on rates. So if you have, you know, a, a lower credit and that can dictate what product I’m going to recommend too, right? So if the, your credit score is a little bit lower, let’s say you have a, a six 20 credit score. And you come to me with less money down and I can maybe get you Qualified for conventional or FHA Well, I may say FHA in that in that situation because the rate may be better based on your credit score So everybody’s a little different everyone’s situations different but credit scores are very important and i’ll just mention a couple quick things um I’ll just add this in to him.

I just a couple things just for my years of doing this Uh 22 and a half years of this industry Is Mistakes. And I brought this up in the past, maybe a couple of years ago, but I’ll just reiterate it. And one thing where most people get caught up is I [00:16:00] find a lot of my clients are concerned about inquiries, right?

Oh, my credit’s run. I’ll have an inquiry. And inquiries are the least amount impactful on your credit. You don’t want a whole bunch of them. And you definitely don’t want a bunch from multiple creditors, you know, getting credit cards and things like that. But where I see the biggest mistakes is credit card usage.

So if you have a 5, 000. Visa credit card and you go and you buy something for 4, 500 and it’s not being paid down that hits your credit much worse than an inquiry. And the other thing I see is. Buying furniture, buying TVs, when they give you no interest for a year, it’s a great deal. And I even did it on one of my first homes when I was in my mid, my mid twenties.

And I’ll never forget my credit score and down 60 points because I had multiple maxed out credit cards for this no interest for a year. So that’s just a couple of things that, you know, younger buyers and any buyer can look at, but you want to make sure all your [00:17:00] payments are on time. And the credit score is very, very important.

And one other thing I’ll mention as well is monitoring services. The monitoring services do not always tell you exactly or specifically what your actual credit score is that, that a creditor like us is going to see. Okay. They’re going to give you trends. Like I have some people tell me, Oh yeah, my, my, my score is eight 60.

Well, they don’t even go that high. Okay. So, and then you’ll run the credit report and it’s seven 70. And it’s just because it’s still great credit score, but the tracking services are not the

Tim Ulbrich: Yeah. Mm-hmm

Tony Umholtz: what we’re looking at. So I try to encourage people to, to that. It’s great that you subscribe to that. It does give you overall trend, but that is not exactly what a creditor score is going to be.

Tim Ulbrich: So you’re talking about like a Credit Karma or some service out? Right.

Tony Umholtz: Yeah. Yeah. I think some of the credit card companies discover all they, they offer these services that track your credit and [00:18:00] people will even scan these to me and say, Hey, this is where I’m at. And, and, and it gives me a good trend, but that’s not what your scores are, you know? So, and then there’s three, there’s three scores that lenders look at as well.

Okay. So that’s another thing I want everyone to know is. There’s Experian, Equifax, and TransUnion. Those are the three large, you know, basically repositories of credit information. And when lenders, mortgage companies run your credit, we use the median score. The median score, so your mid score.

Tim Ulbrich: And I think your, your discussion of credit is just such a good reminder here in the home buying process, but as an overall part of the financial plan, I, I feel like credit, kind of like tax, right? It has a thread that runs across everything. Um. And we’ve talked at length, not only you and I, but we’ve also done some other episodes on understanding credit scores, you know, why it’s important to check your credit report, uh, understanding the components and make up of the credit score.

You were talking about utilization there just a few [00:19:00] moments ago, the more you know about credit, the more you can start to understand. And especially thinking about our listeners, Tony, that maybe they’re saying, Hey, I’m going to buy. A year out, two years out, or I’m not even thinking about it now. What a great time to really solidify your, your credit so that when you get to that point in decision of buying, you know, you’re, you’re ready to go and, and you’ve ultimately, uh, made your credit the best that it can be.

So such an important topic, all of this, Tony leads up to the pre approval. So as we wrap up this first section, we’re talking about pre approval budget. You know, the, the bank’s going to ask us to submit a bunch of information that’s going to help them determine what is that. Ability, right, that they have to be able to lend a certain amount of money and through the submission of information in terms of pay stubs, pay stubs and work history, we’re obviously doing a credit, uh, pull and check as well.

They’re going to then hopefully issue what would be a pre approval. So remind us of that pre approval. [00:20:00] Why is that pre approval so important and how that differentiates from pre qualifications, which I’m seeing more and more out there as well.

Tony Umholtz: Yeah, another good question. So a pre qualification is not validated data by a lender, right? So it’s basically, um, a lot of online Services and pages have this where you can pretty much or verbally supply your information. So if you were to call and say, you know, Tony, I make 100, 000 a year. I have 2 debts, 2 car payments at 500 a month.

And, um, that’s it. Right. And then you would send out, nothing’s validated, right? Credit score might not be run. I haven’t seen your, your pay stubs. Haven’t seen your W2s. Haven’t seen your credit. Like I mentioned. So it’s verbal data. Right. And, and that’s why. Those letters generally don’t carry much weight in the real estate community.

So if you go to a realtor and say, I want to [00:21:00] make an offer, or I want to work with you to find a home, a lot of times they’ll say, well, do you have a pre approval and if you answer, no, I have a prequalification, they. They’re not going to put much weight in that. So the prequalification is fine just for basic knowledge.

I think if you’re just trying to think ahead of time, you’re a few months away from your, you know, really getting into the home buying process. It’s fine to do that. Like I give verbals to people all the time. They’ll call me, especially past clients to say, do you just kind of thinking about this? And does this make sense? But we’re not going to give them anything in writing like that. It’s more just a conversation, but when you’re ready to go look at homes and walk into open houses, a lot of times they’re going to want that letter. So that pre approval letter carries a lot more weight because we’ve ran credit. We’ve seen your income, um, whether it’s W 2s or pay stubs, we’ve seen your liabilities.

So then we can say, okay, in writing. This client is approved for this 700, 000 [00:22:00] mortgage. And a lot of times the listing agent will want that before you even go into the house, you know, just depends on the, the area and the situation, but a lot more weight is given to that preapproval letter. And those are generally good for 90 to 120 days.

Um, so you got some length before you have to update them, but, uh, yes, it’s a big difference. It’s, it’s validated versus unvalidated would be a good way to say it.

Tim Ulbrich: Yeah, the way I think about it, Tony is, you know, that letter, that pre approval letter becomes the key, if you will, that you can really go out, work with a realtor and put in an offer, uh, and feel, feel good about the process moving forward. And I’m glad you mentioned the timeline, 90 to 120 days, because I think that’s one thing that first time home buyers, especially might not be thinking about is how long does that last?

And Ideally, you start this process because it’s going to take time, right? To gather all of your documents. And, uh, I’m thinking about the [00:23:00] last time, Tony, that even went through this with you guys, like you’ve got an online portal helps you kind of walk through each of the individual steps you can’t submit, right?

Until you, you have all the check boxes of the individual, uh, items uploaded and it could just take time to gather. those documents and make sure you have all the right information. And we all know from experience how quickly we can go from, hey I think I want to buy a home, to we want to put an offer. So If it’s within the realm of, hey, I think we might start to be serious about looking, I think moving that pre approval process forward, knowing that you’ve got a 90 to 120 day ish timeline, uh, can be a really smart thing to do for people that are in that, that search phase.

Tony, I want to tap into more of your experience, uh, to, to get your insight on some of the common mistakes that you see. Out there that are, that are made throughout the lending process. And then we’ll continue on talking about some of the different loan options, uh, as well as wrapping up with the closing side of things.

We talked about a big one [00:24:00] already, which was the credit mistakes. And, uh, I love your example of, Hey, if you go finance a thousand dollar piece of furniture and you max out that line, that’s a problem. And people might not be thinking about that. So beyond credit mistakes that people can avoid, what are some of the other big mistakes that you see out there that.

Uh, home buyers are, are making in the process that they could be on the lookout for, and, and ideally avoid.

Tony Umholtz: Yeah, I mean, again, in this kind of going over my career and mistakes that I’ve seen and, you know, it’s one of the One of the biggest things I feel like nowadays people are much more informed than they were when I started my career 20 plus years ago. I mean, there’s more people are more informed. I think where I see some mistakes now are this type of property you’re buying.

And what I mean by that is some clients are buying condominiums and they don’t always know the challenges that come along with that [00:25:00] condominium. Yeah. You may not have to mow the grass or take care of the shrubs or whatever it might be, but HOAs, special assessments. Especially in certain states like, you know, for example, Florida, we had the surfside incident.

There’s been a lot of regulatory challenges that have been placed on on condos and made them much more difficult to finance, much more expensive. And I’m not saying don’t buy condos. I don’t want, I mean, they’re especially in some states. They’re the best option available. Um, like if you’re in a more urban setting, sometimes that’s all that’s available.

It’s affordable, but I think doing your due diligence on the building itself is very important. And I’ve seen some people making mistakes recently in that regard. So if you decide you want to buy a condominium, just, you know, a lot of that’s property specific, right? Um, I think it’s also just, you know, making sure you understand the insurance.

Uh, what comes along with your coverages? Um, you know, uh, some of the insurance companies [00:26:00] now are doing roof schedules instead of an entire roof replacement and look, probably not a lot of worry about that in Ohio. But if you’re on the coast in Texas or in Florida and you have a storm, it damages your roof.

We’re seeing some problems with that here right now. Um, so just understanding the coverages you have. But again, it’s very specific to where you are in, in, in the country, you know, um, I, I think the other thing is, is, uh, floating the market sometimes. I mean, people come to me, what I mean by that is once you get a contract on a home, you’re eligible to lock your rating.

And I, I’ve mentioned this, I’ve always been a bit of a finance nerd. So I’m watching the markets. I’m watching bonds. I’m doing all these things. And I try to give my clients the best. Feedback. I can, and I pass it along to my team. We meet and talk about this daily. Um, but it’s volatile, right? It’s a volatile market and, and rates go up and [00:27:00] down. I have had some people, and I tend to be people who are feel like they’re more informed on the markets. Typically not medical professionals. It’s more like people in the business world that I’ve had. And I’ll kind of say my recommendation is lock. Well, I think I’m going to float it. And of course the rates go up a half point and things like that.

And look, I’m not saying I’m always right. I’m not clearly, I wouldn’t be here. I’d be trading on some Island if I knew everything and had a crystal ball. But I think sometimes taking too much risk is a problem. I kind of like a bird in hand. If you’ve gotten a gain, the rates have come down a little bit since you’ve gone under contract.

You might want to lock that gain in. It’s always been my experience, you know, take, take it off the table. Unless you really see a downtrend. We saw that during COVID, we could all identify it, but normally like in this environment, you get a gain, you should take it. Um, you know, the, the other thing is just not understanding the type of income you have, and most of your audience, Tim is [00:28:00] W2’d for the most

Tim Ulbrich: Yeah, most part. Mm

Tony Umholtz: but, but not everyone, some have 1099 income.

A lot of physicians are doing locums, right? They, they’ll come to us and they, they, they had some fragmentation in their income because they, they, they worked here for six months and lenders don’t treat all income the same. And you have to understand that. I had a gentleman in my office just before this call, past client of mine, and he took a lot of losses on his business, uh, the last few years.

And he had to do it because of some competition abroad. But the problem is the end of the day, we’ve got to use what he reported to the IRS. So you always got to remember lenders have to use what you, they, what they, what you reported to the IRS. And, you know, people will say, well, I actually made more than that, but there’s ways we can add back certain expenses, like especially non cash expenses, like amortization, depreciation, some things like that can be added back into your [00:29:00] overall income if you’re self employed.

But that’s another mistake I see, Tim. Again, not as relevant with all of your audience, but some, maybe someone out there is when you’re self employed, it’s important to understand how you’re getting paid and what you’re getting paid. Are you an S corp or your 1099 LLC? These things are important when you apply for a loan.

So there’s a little more complexity there, but I think it’s important. That’s the mistakes I see is they’re all, they’re almost, I’ve had, I mean, I literally have one person under contract right now who we’re going to have to scramble to figure out how to qualify. And they never came to us first.

Tim Ulbrich: Mm.

Tony Umholtz: and it’s, it’s pretty substantial contract on a home, like a dream home, but that should have been planned ahead of time and let us look, review everything before it comes to this.

So I know it’s long winded. I’m just trying to think of some current things I’m seeing right now in this environment. In the past, there was different risks. Now it’s just really property specific, your [00:30:00] income. I think the other thing would be how far away you are from your job is important to, uh, it’s gotta be reasonable.

Right. You can’t be buying a home to, you know, 200 miles away from where your daily commute is. I’ve had a few people do that. I’m scratching my head. I’m like, well, a primary home may not be a primary home, maybe a secondary home, you know? So I think those are the things, just make sure you have your plans accurately spelled out to the lender at application.

Tim Ulbrich: Yeah, I’m glad you mentioned the self employed income because you’re, you’re right. There’s not a large percentage of pharmacists. There are certainly some listening out there that need to be thinking about that well in advance. And, um, I think communication is, is what I’d recommend they’re just early communication with the lender.

So you understand how they would view the calculation and what information is, is needed and might take a little bit more work to get all that information and make sure you understand. Certainly a decent amount of number of people in our audience that might have a [00:31:00] spouse or a significant other partner that owns a business.

I just had a conversation earlier today where. A pharmacist is a ED clinical pharmacist, but their, their spouse owns a construction company. Um, so maybe their income is pretty stable and, and all W 2, but there might be, uh, some self employed income in there that needs to be, needs to be factored in for sure.

Tony Umholtz: Thing that, that a lender can do is if we see, and I’ve had this happen numerous times, even within your, your community, Tim is when we have pharmacists and their spouse or their partner has a business and it’s losing money. And we, we identify that and we say, well, this actually hurts your qualifications.

We can tell you that ahead of time, you know, and say, help with the guidance of. Well, you might be grossing 2000 a month cash in your pocket from that business, but you’re showing it you’re losing 500 a

Tim Ulbrich: Right.

Tony Umholtz: Right? So that’s important to that’s a mistake I run into as well. So,

Tim Ulbrich: on your [00:32:00] tax return? What’s on your tax return? Yeah. Um. I want to talk about loan options and a little bit about interest rates as we work our way through the process. So we started with the pre approval, the budget. We talked about some of the common pitfalls that happen along the way as well, and certainly getting to the right quote, right loan option is an important determination.

And we’ve talked at length on previous episodes about the different. Loan options. So I don’t feel the need that we have to go through every single one of those again. And the more you and I’ve talked, Tony, the more I’m convinced that it’s, it’s less about the borrower coming and saying, Hey, this is the option that I want.

And this is the rate, you know, that I’m looking for. And it’s really about. finding that good lender relationship where that person can understand your situation and ultimately apply and recommend what is the best loan option for your personal situation, right? Because you’ve given me many examples before where someone comes to you and [00:33:00] says, Hey, I really want to apply for the pharmacist home loan.

And maybe that’s a slam dunk, but maybe they’d be a better fit because of what’s going on with rates or credit scores or other things with an FHA product. And so Talk to us about that relationship a little bit and, and, and why it’s, it’s important for the lender and the lendee ultimately to come to that determination of what, what is the best loan option for their personal situation?

Oh, geez.

Tony Umholtz: environment is. Probably one of the most critical I’ve ever seen of, cause there’s been so much change in the secondary market to where there’s opportunities where like it during COVID, I mean, there was products that like I wouldn’t deviate from, you know, you know, everyone I could get into one product because the rates were so good in that one area I tried to, but now things have changed where the secondary market, there’s opportunities that, that arise.

So. Based on credit score, debt to income ratio, [00:34:00] there’s a lot of reasons why we try to make sure we find the best product. It’s not always the pharmacist’s product. A lot of times it is, but there are times, scenarios, where there’s programs that make more sense based on that individual’s debt to income ratio, just what we covered today, credit score, that matters.

Pricing can be much better with, for example, FHA. when your credit score might be a little lower. The FHA pricing has gone through times where it’s just incredibly good, even though there’s some PMI. So I really try to make sure we’re matching that best product. And then there’s some geographical programs, depending on where a home buyer is looking that, um, You know, we’ve used to that are that are kind of unique to that area based on a load of moderate, moderate income, even, you know, depending on the track you’re buying in census track.

There’s all sorts of different programs out there and I try not to limit or be short sighted. [00:35:00] Um, so, uh, we try to look at what the best opportunity is at a given time. And, and I have done that throughout my career, no matter where, you know, whatever the timing was. Um, I’ll never forget. I’ll tell one quick story just you guys might be too young for this, but it’s, but if you ever saw that movie, the big short, you’ll remember this.

But during 2004, five and six, 2004 and five, primarily Lehman brothers had this great program. I did a lot of a paper lending. I never did the, like the subprime lending back then. And I was young, but I was the second top producer at my mortgage, the mortgage company I worked for in the country. And I worked really hard.

It was 12 hour days. I loved it. I had one part time assistant, but different times, but Lehman brothers had this great product where with a second mortgage, we could do 65 percent LTVs and get the best pricing I’d ever seen a bit, but they were using it for non [00:36:00] doc, they actually had this stated income product, which I didn’t do a lot of, but this particular program had just the best rates.

Well, I ended up being invited to this call where they were telling me how, Oh, you, you know, we really like this, what you’re doing. And basically we’ll buy like a hundred percent loans with no income verification and all this stuff. So it was, it was crazy times and sure enough, a few years

Tim Ulbrich: Yeah.

Tony Umholtz: everything blew up.

But my point is this, we found that the best pricing was through that product and we utilized it. Right. So, and it helped a lot of, of our clients and I. Nowadays, there’s nothing like that out there. It’s basically pretty vanilla. You have, you know, um, you know, several different options, but we always try to find it the best option for that individual, but, um, I’ll never forget being on that call and having that pit in my stomach being like 27 years old, thinking it doesn’t sound right, you know, it, this doesn’t sound right.

And then a few years later, it all went

Tim Ulbrich: Here’s why it didn’t sound right. Yeah. [00:37:00] Yeah. I think there’s just a lot to think about here that can be so overwhelming for a first time homebuyer if they’re just Google searching, right? It’s, you know, they’re looking at, uh, different rates, fixed rates, uh, variable rates, adjustable rate, mortgage products are out there.

They’re looking at different terms that are out there. They’re looking about options that have points or don’t have points or reading about different loan types. And, you know, should I do a 30, a 20, a 15, and how much is it going to take for a down payment? And to me, this is where some of the internet searching, and I learned this the hard way one time where.

You know, you’re excited about buying a home, you put in your information, and all of a sudden the phone starts ringing 24 7, right? And, the problem with that is, it’s not only is it annoying, but it’s narrowing you down a pathway too early that may or may not even be the pathway that you want to be on.

And I always go back to, Can there, can there be a lender relationship and can you [00:38:00] pick up the phone and call someone, have a conversation about your situation? Hey, I’m looking in this area. This is about what we’re thinking, you know, budget wise. And then based on the products, based on all those factors coming together, what is the best product, you know, that that’s available in that moment for their situation and for the rates that are available.

So I’m going to keep beating that drum Tony, because I think it’s so important that. Someone might go in and we’ll talk here in just a minute about the pharmacist home loan product. And, and, you know, hopefully that’s a good fit. Um, but for some people that might go into that and say, Hey. That is a good option, but maybe there’s a better option, you know, that’s, that’s available as well.

Let’s talk about the pharma Go ahead.

Tony Umholtz: Oh, you’re exactly right. Cause you know, credit scores, the mark, the market, all of that applies. And we always want to evaluate what’s best at this current time. And one other thing I’ll mention too, is it’s really one of the safest times that I’ve ever seen as far as lending goes to, to buy because the regulatory environment [00:39:00] is very consumer friendly.

Um, there’s, there’s not a lot of, I mean, the, the rules are in place to, to prevent defaults. Right. And it is overwhelming to some degree, but also there’s no more prepayment penalties. There used to be prepayment penalties on lots of these loan products 20

Tim Ulbrich: to believe. Hard to

Tony Umholtz: Yeah. I mean, it was like everything had you to watch your prepay period and all this, that’s all gone.

I mean, so if rates start dipping, which. It could happen. Um, if we see inflation continue to fall, you’re, you could refinance in six months, eight months, whenever it made sense financially. Right. I mean, so it’s a very liquid time as long as you qualify. I think it’s, there’s a lot of, um, you know, from a financing side, it’s probably never been safer.

It’s, you just have to go in. Understanding that, you know, owning a property is not renting, right? You own it and you’ve got to take care of it. It’s your asset.

Tim Ulbrich: That’s right. When we talk about the different products, let’s finish this section by talking about the Pharmacist home loan [00:40:00] product, as I suspect many are interested. We’ve mentioned it a few times now. Tell us about The ins and outs in terms of why that product is unique. Minimum credit scores, maximum loan amounts.

So our listeners can get a feel of whether or not that may be an option, uh, that they want to look into. Um,

Tony Umholtz: is 700, but there is some pricing adjustments if you’re under seven 40. So that’s why one of the things we do, we will look at some conventional products. If your credit score is 701, for example, right? Cause, cause that, that it’s more sensitive rate wise when you get under 740.

So that’s the minimum of 700. Um, as far as like the down payments, down payments are 3 percent down if you’re a first time buyer. Okay. So only 3 percent down, no PMI. If you’ve owned before, it’s 5 percent down. Okay. 5 percent down again, no PMI. The maximum loan amount typically matches [00:41:00] the conventional loan limits for that area.

So most areas right now are about 806, 550. There are some higher cost areas, you know, that are, that are higher than that. Certain counties, especially around Washington, DC, California, um, higher cost areas, New York, uh, but for the most part around that 806, 550 is the loan amount max. So lesser down payment, still pretty high loan amount.

You know, it’s pretty viable. Um, no prepayment penalties, like I mentioned, there aren’t really a lot of reserve requirements either, so you don’t have to have a lot of, you know, of, uh, cash in the bank, so to speak, uh, in reserves. And then the seller is able to pay some of the closing costs as well, uh, which is helpful sometimes, you know, especially as there’s more inventory guys, sellers will be more willing to negotiate.

That is one of the benefits of inventory. So the more inventory grows, the more opportunity there is for buyers, they get a little bit [00:42:00] more leverage than they used to have. So, um, the ability to have closing costs paid by the seller, something that could be negotiated in, and this program allows that as well.

Tim Ulbrich: and available in the lower 48. One of the reasons that we’ve, we’ve

Tony Umholtz: Yeah.

Tim Ulbrich: on, you know, you’ll find, you’ll find some regional products or state specific products, but, uh, any pharmacist listening that that’s a living in the lower 48, this is an option and we’ll link to this in the show notes. But if you go to yourfinancepharmacist.

com forward slash home dash loan. You’ll find all the information Tony just mentioned as well. Some other resources, uh, for, for those that are looking to purchase a home. Tony, I’m glad you mentioned the reserves as well, because when I think back to my journey of being a first time home buyer, or for that matter, even buying our second home, that’s a place where a lot of people can get stuck, right?

Which is, Hey, we’re, we’re working hard to come up with a down payment. Um, and now we got to have a certain amount that’s in reserves as well. And liquidity we know is just a difficult thing for a lot of [00:43:00] pharmacists that are in the first five or 10 years of their career. Um, just given that there’s other demands on, on income, they’re paying off student loan debt, they’re working towards other goals.

So that minimal reserve requirement can be an important aspect that I think we probably don’t talk enough about, uh, when, when you and I talk about the pharmacist home loan product. So thank you for the reminder on that one there. Let’s wrap up by talking about what really happens behind the scenes from hey, I’ve got my pre approval, I go out, I find the home, I’m working with the realtor, I make an offer, we’re under contract, walk us through what’s happening behind the scenes from I’m under contract, yeah.

Ultimately to closing, because I think this is, it feels probably for a lot of people, like a black box of all these things that are happening. You guys, I know are working really hard. People want to close on time. They want the process to move forward without bumps. Spoiler alert. It’s probably going to have some bumps along the way.

That’s just part of the process that, that happens, but [00:44:00] what happens behind the scene from, Hey, we’ve got an offer. We’re under contract all the way to we’re signing out of documents and we’re getting the keys.

Tony Umholtz: Yeah. Great questions, right? There’s a lot that goes on behind the scenes and everyone’s situations different. You know, it’s it’s really amazing how many different things can happen. But, um, so, so once you go to contract, once you’ve gotten your pre approval, you’ve gone to contract on a home. Yes, have, you know, part of the battle’s done, but there’s still a lot more left before you close.

And so most contracts have a timeline, right? Of let’s say it’s a 30 day contract. Okay. There’s typically a commitment letter deadline. So that’s when your financing contingency is, is up, so to speak. So what that means is like any earnest money you gave, let’s say you gave 5, 000 to secure the contract contract.

That money is basically non refundable if you get denied for [00:45:00] financing after the commitment letter deadline. So it’s very important you have a lender that can meet that deadline to minimize that risk. So that’s the first thing we look at, like, when is that deadline? When’s the appraisal contingency? And we work on those contingency basis.

I’m very fortunate here, and I’ve worked at two other lenders in my career. I’ve been at this bank now for over, a little over seven years now, I think. Yeah, over a little over seven and we have probably one of the best operational systems I’ve been a part of and And basically having my own team, it’s made it a lot easier for me.

And the reason I’m going to mention this is I’m going to speak to a couple of different systems of how lenders work, because I’ve worked at different systems and I’ve seen it firsthand. So the black box, so to speak, is once you go to contract, you send all your financials into the lender, everything starts, right?

Normally that loan originator will send the file to the [00:46:00] processor, the processor on my team. Um, I have two or three that work for my group will then submit the loan to the underwriter. Okay. And we have a fast track policy as well. So a lot of our products, we can have a loan commitment. If we have a full file within like 48 hours of receipt, it happens very, very fast.

And that’s one of our advantages is it is the speed that we can get that proof approval and meeting those criteria. And then from there, the appraisals ordered as well, generally takes a week or two to get that appraisal back, I find most areas a week or two, and that’ll meet that, you know, as long as that appraises, okay, then that meets the requirement.

Right. And the appraisals were reviewed to. So going back processor submits to underwriter, you get the approval. Okay. So the loan’s been approved, formally approved. There’s [00:47:00] generally conditions with that loan. So you’re going to have conditions that have to be collected from the borrower to get the final approval.

During that time, the appraisals ordered, right? Um, typically all your inspections are done with your real real estate agent, uh, ahead of time, you know, before you get this far during that time, but this is all being worked on the same time. So conditions, a lot of times it’s just how quick do they come back from the borrower generally takes a borrower.

A week or so, you know, to get it back to you, right? It’s not something that they’re going to just shoot right back to you. Some people do, but some people just take their time. Especially if our underwriting approval happened quickly, we’ll get those, those documents back. We’ll resubmit it for. you know, to get the final or formal, you know, to clear up any conditions right before closing.

And sometimes there’s more back and forth, depending on if those conditions didn’t quite fit the, the requirements. Okay. Appraisal comes back, appraisals [00:48:00] reviewed typically a week or so prior to closing. Our closer will work with the title agent or the closing attorney to get the correct paperwork for closing and the correct.

Uh, documents prepared, so they start doing it ahead of time to meet the new requirement. I say new, but several years ago, TRID became a requirement where a borrower had to acknowledge the closing statement at least three business days prior to closing. So that’s why you have to sign off on a primary home at least three days prior to closing.

And review all of review, all the, um, financials, and then you can close, you know, three business days later. So that, that is done at least a week ahead of time with the settlement agent. So meantime, most transactions go pretty smooth where, you know, there’s some complexity underwriting when you’re self employed, but [00:49:00] most clients have W2s pay steps comes in, we get it underwritten quickly and the appraisals ordered and. We work to the final loan approval closer, gets the paperwork out, then the client goes, signs on. The closing day loan is

Tim Ulbrich: Mm

Tony Umholtz: so that’s behind the scenes black box. Now there was a, there’s a, there can be some moving parts. So I worked at a larger bank prior to coming here, and there was some years I was their top producer in the country even.

And they were big. They’re very big. I’m not gonna name ’em, but they’re, they’re a bigger bank. And we used to have operations that I could somewhat control, meaning my processor, right, and my underwriter, I had a group that knew me, knew me, our system, my team, they basically centralized that,

Tim Ulbrich: Mm.

Tony Umholtz: where I lost complete control.

And it would, it would truly be, I wouldn’t know what’s going on, right? So I couldn’t update my clients. And

Tim Ulbrich: All the while they’re asking questions and yeah.

Tony Umholtz: And unfortunately, a lot of [00:50:00] banks work that way, even to this day, especially the larger ones, because it can be, they’re not as nimble to manage smaller teams like we are. So that is one thing you see out there is there’s still some of that out there where it’s call center driven.

It’s centralized. It’s hard to move quickly. It’s hard to communicate. And that’s where some of these problems can arise. And that’s why I do think it’s important to have that communication because things happen, there is things that happen, like even in the appraisal process, we had an appraiser couldn’t find comparables, they’re coming back to our team.

Those are the things that happen. They just are out of our, all of our control. There’s things with job movement. Um, people take new jobs and, you know, I’m dealing with one right now where The, the employment agreement got kicked back a few months, which that could, they still want to close early. And it’s, you know, there’s always complexity, right?

You just want to try to get answers quickly and communicate [00:51:00] quickly, but there’s a lot that goes on behind the scenes. There’s, I mean, I don’t know how much more depth you want, but I mean, there’s flood certifications that are run, right? During the process, we track, we track any inquiries on your credit to make sure you’re not borrowing other

Tim Ulbrich: Not, not a good time to be,

Tony Umholtz: Yeah. Lenders do that. We have to do that. So we track people to make sure that’s why I say don’t buy stuff while you’re going through the process, but you’re being tracked during process, making sure your credit’s not being utilized. Um, there, there’s a lot of things. There’s a survey that’s ordered.

Typically the title company will do that. But you’re getting a survey on the home, you have to get homeowner’s insurance. Um, but the lender is working through a lot of little details. We’re doing, we do fraud guard. There’s different things we do to, to ensure that there’s no fraud with any of the parties involved, uh, seller, title company, all of that.

A lot of things are screened now that they weren’t in the past, you know? So. There’s a lot that goes on, um, but [00:52:00] if you have a system, it can be done quickly. You know, if you have it, if you get the materials, I will say one more thing for the audience. The better you are at responding to the lender with the items they need quicker, the quicker the process and smoother it’ll go for you.

So whoever lender, no matter what lender you use. You choose to use if you respond quickly and you’re proactive and you get them what they need when they request it The process will go much much better for you

Tim Ulbrich: Well, I’m going to give a shout out to our audience there because I would contend that most pharmacists, maybe not all, but most pharmacists are pretty responsive and communicative in the process. And probably, not probably, I know why that for many people having that relationship would be so important for all the reasons that you mentioned.

Right. And there’s really two things that I heard there, one, you know, a team that is not Decentralized, you know, in terms of, or I guess centralized in the way that you described it, where you don’t [00:53:00] have access to them and, and kind of that black, black box becomes what we were talking about. Um, so having that access to a team where you can get that information quickly back to the client.

And then again, just that personal relationship, I think matters a lot. Call me old school, but it’s what I say on the business side all the time. We work in a local credit union here where. Whether it’s related to, you know, some of our checking accounts or a line of credit or whatever is the question, I know I can call Meredith if I have a question and maybe Meredith won’t always be the direct person that answers my question, but she can help me get in contact with whoever is and, you know, when someone knows that, hey, I can talk with Tony or I can talk with Cindy or I can talk with Aaron, like, and there’s a real person who understands my story.

Scenario all the more important when we’re talking about a highly emotional, large purchase with lots of moving pieces and parts in a very short period of time. Right. That’s a recipe for stress and I, and I think having the right people in your corner and having access to them and having good communication back [00:54:00] and forth can make this go as, as smooth as it, as it hopefully will, knowing that there might be some bumps along the way as well.

Tony Umholtz: Yeah Absolutely. I think you know, one of the things about this industry is There’s so many little details, right? Even like, how can I bump my credit score up 20 points? You know, having that ability to talk through that it’s, it’s complex. It’s not something, you know, I remember thinking one time, well, maybe AI will, we’ll take, take away our, a lot of our business.

Well, it’s funny, the AI things I sit in on, listen to, it’s all just making our business more efficient. There’s just too much complexities. Everyone’s so different. You can’t standardize it. Everyone’s got a different situation. So, um, the personal approach, I think is always going to be needed. There’s a lot of complexity in lending, a lot of things that you can’t just put in a box, but, um, there’s a system behind it.

And I do think from what, I think there’s so many more protections now. [00:55:00] For the, for the end user and the client than there ever has been. It’s really a, even though it is an intimidating process, it’s as safe as it’s ever been.

Tim Ulbrich: Tony, this is great stuff. And we covered a lot from pre approval to closing. And we have a great resource that I’ve referenced once. I’ll reference it again. We’ll link to in our show notes called five easy, five easy steps to get a home loan. Even if you don’t have 20 percent down, you can find that by going to yourfinancialpharmacist.

com forward slash home dash loan. It’s a great resource for homebuyers. In there, you’ll find some more information about the pharmacist home loan offering, recapping much of what Tony described on the show as well. And again, we’ll link to that in the show notes. So Tony, as always, really appreciate your perspective.

And thanks for taking time to come on the show.

Tony Umholtz: Thanks, Tim. Always good. Good hanging out with you, man. Thank you.

Tim Ulbrich: Appreciate it. Take care. 

 

[END]

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YFP 398: Is Your Income Your Rate Limiting Step?


In this episode, Tim Ulbrich, YFP CEO looks at three powerful areas for growing your income: maximizing your compensation, real estate investing, and building side hustles or businesses.

Episode Summary

While cutting expenses is a key part of managing your finances, there’s a limit to how much you can cut. The good news? Your income has no ceiling. 

In this episode, Tim Ulbrich, YFP CEO looks at three powerful areas for growing your income: maximizing your compensation, real estate investing, and building side hustles or businesses. Tim shares some personal experiences and examples from other pharmacists who have successfully diversified their income streams and created financial opportunities that go beyond the traditional 9-to-5 grind.

Key Points from the Episode

  • [00:00] Introduction to Financial Freedom
  • [00:50] The Importance of Growing Your Income
  • [05:01] Maximizing Your Compensation
  • [09:12] Real Estate Investing
  • [13:50] Side Hustles and Business Income
  • [26:06] Leveraging Extra Income for Wealth Building
  • [28:20] Reflection and Conclusion

Episode Highlights

“ Opportunities exist all around us to grow our income. I didn’t say that it was easy and I didn’t say it wouldn’t come without failures along the way. I said that there were opportunities all around us. And that it has no limits.” – Tim Ulbrich [1:43]

“ Is my value being compensated appropriately? If so, great. If not, are you advocating for yourself? And if you’re not advocating for yourself, why not?” – Tim Ulbrich [5:25]

“ Not all side hustles and not all businesses are a good return on time investment, and especially in the case of a business, yes, there is more upside than a traditional W 2. But there’s also risk and we have to assess what that risk is.” – Tim Ulbrich [14:46]

“ Real wealth building potential happens when you take income from these streams and have that money growing and working for you.” – Tim Ulbrich [27:12]

Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode

Episode Transcript

Tim Ulbrich: [00:00:00] Hey, everybody, Tim Ulbrich here. And welcome to this week’s episode of the YFP podcast, where we strive to inspire and encourage you on your path towards achieving financial freedom. Today, I’m diving deep into a fun topic for anyone looking to build wealth. And that is the role of growing your income.

While cutting expenses is a key part of managing your finances. There’s a limit to how much you can cut the good news. Income has no ceiling. In this episode, we’re going to look at three powerful areas for growing your income, maximizing your compensation, real estate, investing, and building a side hustle or business.

I’ll share some personal experiences and examples from other pharmacists who have successfully diversified their income streams and created financial opportunities that go beyond the traditional nine to five. So let’s dive in to this week’s episode.

Hey guys, welcome to this week’s episode. I’m excited to jump in. As we talk about how your income just might be [00:01:00] the rate limiting step of your financial plan. When we talk about achieving our longterm financial goals, whether that’s building wealth, having more funds to invest in experiences. Whether that’s giving all of the above, it comes down to having cashflow to achieve those goals and cutting expenses.

We’ve talked about that many times on this show before it plays an important role, make no mistake, but at some point in time. You can only cut so much. And so we want to spend some time looking at the other side of the coin, which is growing your income and what potential that might provide when it comes to the financial plan.

So what if we shifted our focus more to the income side of the equation? Because opportunities exist all around us to grow our income. I didn’t say that it was easy and I didn’t say it wouldn’t come without failures along the way. I said that there were opportunities all around us. And that it has no limits.

And this is a big mindset shift [00:02:00] for many of us. That grew up in a profession where there was a ceiling, at least one that we put in our own minds on how much we would earn with the degree that we had. Many of us went through school and we came out with this story. I’m set or unsaid that, Hey, when you graduate, you’re going to make a good six figure income.

And objectively speaking, pharmacists do make a good six figure income. But because of that mindset, we often get uncomfortable. If we think about income growing beyond that number. The idea that it could be more, maybe double or triple that. It’s scary because it butts up against what we have known and what we have believed, right?

It butts up against our experiences. Now, my experience tells me. In my own situation and working with many other pharmacists that if we have a solid financial base and foundation to work from, the more opportunities that we actually start to see, [00:03:00] perhaps they’ve been there all along, but the more aware we are, because we’re now in a position and a mindset that we can entertain the idea of taking calculated risks.

Because when we have that strong foundation, we shift our mindset from a scarcity mindset to an abundance mindset. And we begin to see the opportunities for how we can not only grow our income, but how we can leverage that income growth to other parts of the financial plan. So the question is what opportunities exist?

To earn more income. Tell me more, Tim, what opportunities exist to earn more income. And I’ll speak from experience of those that I have, uh, have run across my own financial plan and those that I’ve come across in interviewing other pharmacists on this show, certainly it’s not meant to be an all inclusive list.

And if you have other ideas, whether you’re employing them in your own financial plan, or, you know, of others. That are leveraging strategies to grow their income and expand their income to accelerate their financial plan. [00:04:00] Send us an email at info at your financial pharmacist. com. We’d love to hear about it and be able to address those on an upcoming episode.

Now, before we jump in, I am not going to spend time on the one income growing idea that perhaps is the most obvious, right? Which is picking up. One of the blessings that we have in our profession is that we can, in many cases, pick up extra shifts, either at our employer or at another employer, at a really good hourly wage, that those additional dollars could be put to work in the financial plan.

So, if that’s available to you, and you’re interested in doing that work, that just might be the path of lease resistance. So I’m not going to focus on that, but I am going to focus on three other buckets of which I can, I think you can grow your income, maximizing your compensation, real estate, investing, and generating income through a side hustle or a business.

And again, I’ll feature several examples of [00:05:00] pharmacists all along the way. So let’s start with number one, which is your compensation. Right. Let’s address what you already have available to you to see if we can maximize that further. See if we can squeeze out more from our compensation while we also explore other strategies.

So if you are working a W 2 job, I want you to ask yourself this question. Is my value being compensated appropriately? Is my value being compensated appropriately? If so, great. If not Are you advocating for yourself? And if you’re not advocating for yourself, why not? Is there a potential for a raise within your organization and negotiating that raise or perhaps a, a new position externally that could give a boost to your income?

And now we all know from experience that when it comes to satisfaction in the workplace, it’s not just about the income. So I don’t want you to lose sight of those other factors, but if your value is not compensated appropriately, is there an [00:06:00] opportunity internally or externally? That we could pursue to grow that top number.

Now, my experience tells me that making a transition from one employer to another is a good opportunity. It’s a good time to right size compensation and negotiate. If you have the leverage to do so now, of course, if there’s an opportunity within an organization, and that is one that you already like working for that organization, we want to pursue that first, but if not, perhaps a transition.

Can afford us an opportunity to grow our income. Let me give you an example. In 2018, I made the transition from an academic role at Northeast Ohio medical university to one at Ohio state. In addition to having my partner, Tim Baker, certified financial planner in my corner, who’s an expert in negotiation, and he was able to coach me through that process.

In addition to that resource, there was one thing in particular. That allowed me to jump [00:07:00] my compensation by more than 30, 000 per year during the transition. And that one key ingredient that I believe is a really important ingredient when it comes to negotiation is that I had leverage. Now that’s not a bad word.

That’s not a greedy word. It’s a fact when you look at the negotiation process, do you have leverage or do you not have leverage? It’s an important self assessment. And the reason I had leverage is that I didn’t have an urgency. To make that move. And I applied for the position with a mindset that, Hey, if it works out great, if it doesn’t, that’s okay too.

And that really led me to approach the interview with an abundance mindset. I was able to cast a bold vision for the position that I was interviewing for. And I was able to do that, knowing that that vision was either going to be a home run, or it was going to be a strikeout. And because I love the work that I was doing at Northeast Ohio Medical University.

I like my colleagues. I was [00:08:00] afforded great opportunities there. I was curious about this new position, but it wasn’t a must have. And that leverage really helped me throughout the negotiation process. So back to the question, whether it’s an internal negotiation or an external negotiation, is your value being compensated appropriately?

Yes. Ideally your income is outpatient inflation, but asking for a raise for inflation sake, isn’t going to get you very far in the longterm. Rather, we need to focus on value, value that you bring to the employer and ensuring that that value is fairly compensated. And the key word here in the negotiation is fair.

If we’re talking about value and fair compensation, we’re now in an environment that allow us for hopefully a successful. Negotiation. If you’re curious to learn more about negotiation strategies, Tim Baker, and I talked about this several times in the podcast, but most recently on episode three 84, where we talked about beyond [00:09:00] salary negotiation, looking at your value in the workplace, so make sure to check out.

That episode that’s area number one, as we look at how we can potentially grow our income. And there we’re talking about compensation. Area number two is real estate investing, real estate investing. Now, outside of investing in the purchase of our office building for your financial pharmacist and doing some more passive hard money lending.

I’ll talk about that more here in a moment. I don’t necessarily consider myself to be a big real estate investor. It’s an area that I value as a diversified part of the financial plan. It’s one that I want to continue to grow as a part of our own financial plan, but I don’t consider myself a big real estate investor or pro in this area, but we have some great resources available through our community.

And those have been led by David Bright and Nate Hedrick, who are the co hosts of the YFP Real Estate Investing Podcast. They put out some great content sharing, not only their own investing journeys, but also [00:10:00] featuring other pharmacists that are doing real estate investing in all different types of way across the country.

So make sure to check out that resource. That said. While I don’t consider myself to be a big real estate investor, I do personally know many pharmacists in our community that have been successful in this space and they’ve done it in a lot of different ways. And one of the cool things about real estate is that it comes in many different forms and flavors that depending on your risk tolerance, depending, uh, depending on what level of involvement, how hands on you do or don’t want to be, some opportunities may be more interesting than others.

And many of you are likely already real estate investors and perhaps aren’t even aware of it. I’m talking about investing in REITs, what are known as real estate investment trust, which just might already be in your asset allocation inside of your 401k or inside of your 403b as one example. And what is a REIT?

Well, instead of owning and holding a property, a REIT or a real estate investment trust [00:11:00] is an investment in a company that pools money together to own or finance a real estate portfolio. So it’s one way that you can diversify your portfolio and get invested in real estate without owning the physical property and managing that yourself.

So what are the different types of real estate investing that are out there? Probably what comes to mind for many people, what I consider kind of the traditional real estate investing approach is what I call a buy and hold. So you buy a property, perhaps it’s, it’s undervalued. Maybe you do a little bit of fix up for the property.

Hopefully you have a long term tenant. If not, you’re dealing with vacancy and turnover and you’re, you’re charging a monthly rent that that’s. Ideally, positive cash flow and you have that for a long period of time and you can replicate that process potentially over and over again. So that, that’s a more traditional, a more active approach, depending on if you have a property manager, if you’re doing it yourself, that would be a buy and hold.

But there’s lots of other ways. There’s short and midterm rental. So think Airbnb. Right. There’s fix [00:12:00] and flips think, uh, HGTV fixer upper. So these are properties where again, uh, a property that often might be undervalued need significant repair work. You buy it at that lower rate, you fix it up. And ideally you set, you sell it for a profit.

There’s many other considerations to be thinking about there, but that that’s essentially the idea. There’s things that are more passive, like syndications and hard money lending, where you’re serving essentially as being the bank for other people that are doing. Real estate investing. There’s commercial real estate investing.

There’s house hacking where you’re living in a property while renting out a portion of the property to one or more individuals. Heck you can even buy a motel Schitt’s Creek style and turn that into an investment property, similar to what Stewart and Elizabeth only did as they shared on episode. 46 of the YFP real estate investing podcast.

We’ll link to that episode in the show notes. So there’s lots of different flavors of real estate investing, and it’s certainly not for everyone, but it can [00:13:00] provide some very tangible benefits. Including rental income or cashflow appreciation of that property over time where that equity could be leveraged There’s tax benefits and certainly for those that are thinking potentially something like an early retirement We can liquidate some of these properties as one avenue of creating some of that cash flow before we pull on other Investment accounts that might be tied up to that 59 and a half age that we think about with things like a 401k or an IRA.

Lots to think about there. Make sure you check out a real estate investment investment podcast shows. If you’re not already familiar with those, and I think you’ll find those inspiring, informational, and just give you ideas of how real estate investing may or may not fit in with your financial plan. So that’s number two, is we look at three different categories of how you can potentially grow your income.

The third one that I want to talk about. Is side hustle or business income. Now, these are very different, right? If someone owns a business and they operate a [00:14:00] business and that’s, that’s their full time thing versus side hustle. When we think about traditionally, you’re working a full time or part time job in addition to doing the side hustle.

But because many side hustles can become a business, I’m going to group these two things. Uh, together now, I think it’s important to know, right? There’s, there’s risk in lots of the different things that we’re talking about more so with the business and the side hustle, but because side hustles and entrepreneurship have become all the rage over the last decade or so, and, and I’m, I’m all in for a good side hustle or a business, but not all side hustles and not all businesses are a good return on time investment, and especially in the case of a business, yes, there is more upside than a traditional W 2.

But there’s also risk and we have to assess what that risk is. And when it comes to growing your income through a side hustle or business, this could be pharmacy related, or as you’ll see with a couple of examples, as I get towards the end, it might be not pharmacy related, especially if you have a creative outlet or hobby or [00:15:00] skill that is independent of your role or skills as a pharmacist.

So let’s look at a few examples of pharmacists. That have experience building a side hustle or a business. And I’m going to group these into different categories just to get the ideas flowing as you think about your own financial plan, the number one category and no particular order is medical writing.

I see a lot of pharmacists that are interested in doing medical writing. Yes. You can be a contractor. To do medical writing so this could be a side hustle or you could build and own your own medical writing business So I think about individuals like britney hoffman eubanks who we had on episode 126 that has her own medical writing business banner medical I think about megan freeland who was on episode 259 where we talked about building her medical writing business while she was also working Full time job.

I think about Austin Ulrich who was on the podcast who talked about Going on his own as an as an entrepreneur to build a a medical writing business and how he’s able to do that 

I think [00:16:00] about Warda Nawaz who talked about in episode 280, how she was able to pivot to a writing career. Lots of cool examples of pharmacists that are dabbling in this from a side hustle as a contractor to building their own medical writing business. Another bucket I would consider here is clinical consulting, right?

In days gone by, this would be performing things like medication therapy management services for a local pharmacy or independent pharmacy in modern day. This would be doing things like virtual medication therapy management or comprehensive medication reviews through companies like Aspen RX Health. So there are opportunities to pick up extra hours, earn some additional income, applying skills that maybe you’re using in your everyday job, or perhaps is tapping into a different part that you’re not using.

Every day in your work, there’s opportunities in speaking lots of pharmacists. I know that are getting paid for speaking Now this can be a grind when you think about the travel if it’s in person speaking Um, sometimes the the money may not be as [00:17:00] as good as it you want Depending on what type of speaking you’re doing, what your audience is.

I know several pharmacists that have made additional income predominantly as a side hustle, this certainly could build into a career. One I think about in particular would be Corey Jenks. We’ve had on the podcast most recently on episode three 62, uh, talking about fatherhood, family, and fire. If you’re not familiar with Corey, he’s written a couple of books and.

On that episode, we got to talk about his book on fatherhood. He’s a comedian and he just has a great speaking package and keynote that brings his healthcare experience, formerly working with the VA now working for a different employer, but. Pairing that health care experience with his passion and love for comedy and bringing that in a way that helps Clinicians pharmacists and other health care professionals be more compassionate And light hearted and how they approach those interactions with patients and he gets paid For the speaking that he does and his book led to his speaking his speaking helped further his book sales So [00:18:00] that’s one example that I would throw out there The next bucket that I would bring forward is what I’m calling content creation or online courses or communities where people are monetizing their clinical expertise.

So they built a brand, they have an area of clinical specialty and expertise, and they’ve been able to monetize that in different ways. Several individuals here. That are worth highlighting one, Jamie Wilkie. We had her on, on a couple episodes of the podcast, most recently on three 59. Again, we’ll link to all these in the show notes.

She first built a pharmacogenetics, uh, course in community. She worked for a while in retail pharmacy, left that work, built her own, uh, course and community has now built a brand under the misfit farm D where she’s helping to. coach pharmacists that are looking at career transitions and how they can take the skills that they have and be able to apply those skills to perhaps a different work scenario and employment setting than the one that they’re in now.

So if you’re not already following her on LinkedIn, I would, I would encourage you to [00:19:00] check her out. She’s got great content. I think about individuals like Blair Teelmeyer. Who built the pharmapreneur Academy. And she took a difficult situation of finding herself unemployed to starting her own business and became really a thought leader in our profession, not only through that Academy, but through her personal brand, that is a lead to additional consulting opportunities for her as well.

She wrote a book as well, early in her journey. Uh, so, so lots of pieces to consider here. I think about Tim Gauthier, who’s an ID clinical specialist that we had on the podcast a couple of years ago, who has built. His has taken his clinical expertise to build and monetize, uh, an online community and paid courses.

He has a social following that he built early on in Twitter and now X all focused around ID stewardship. So it’s a work that he’s doing day in and day out, and he’s able to then package that and build a brand around being the leading expert in ID stewardship for pharmacists. I think about individuals like Jimmy Pruitt, [00:20:00] who’s worked full time in an ED pharmacy and has built, started with a podcast.

He’s got an online community and resource. He’s got now an in person, uh, live event for emergency pharmacists and other healthcare professionals. Uh, built that while working full time as an emergency clinical specialist. Again, taking the work that’s being done every day and using it to monetize that clinical expertise and be able to reach a broader group.

I also think about individuals like Kelly Carlstrom, the founder of Kelly C Farm D, who’s a PGY 2 trained oncology he monk specialist that said, Hey, why isn’t this information more readily available outside of large academic medical centers and PGY 2 trained programs? And clinical specialists. And so she built an online community and resources where pharmacists all over the country could have access to that type of information to grow their clinical skills so they could better serve their practice sites and their patients.

Lots of cool examples of pharmacists that are creating courses, communities, [00:21:00] content, finding monetize their clinical expertise. Another bucket would be being an adjunct professor or teacher. I know several pharmacists that work full time but then they adjunct teach at a, could be a college of pharmacy, could be a college of medicine, uh, could be with a nursing program, could be with another healthcare profession that has a pharmacology course, could be in person, could be virtual, online courses, lots of different ways to get involved and to be able to again tap into a different area of your skills.

And earn some additional income. Another area would be an expert witness in episode 112 of the podcast A phd trained pharmacist brent roland shared his story about becoming a pharmacy expert witness for law firms Primarily focusing on marketing cases in addition to standard of care cases And he was able to get this experience while he was in school with his professor Asking for help on a big case.

That’s where he got started and then he continued to receive Casework from there. Many criminal [00:22:00] and civil cases involve medications, involve toxicology, involve quality of care and negligence. All areas where pharmacists are positioned well to provide their expert, uh, opinion and, uh, potentially some expert witness and testimony.

Another area would be consulting. Lots of pharmacists that are doing consulting. I think about individuals like Jill Pallier, who has a background in patient safety, uh, who’s built a specialty practice and has really paired those skills to be able to build a consulting business. I think about individuals like Brooke Griffin, who we had on episode 379 of the podcast, where she talked about her journey, building the business, the bold idea group.

Where she’s a full time academician at Midwestern and was able to build this coaching business while she was and continues to work full time in academia. I think of another category, which would be software or app based businesses. So Derek Borkowski who built pearls, if you’re not already familiar with pearls, I hope you’ll check it out.

[00:23:00] Great drug information resource. When I was in pharmacy school, we had a very antiquated version of micrometics and Lexicom. This is a much more user friendly modern version of those tools. I often joke with Derek, I wish I had this tool and resource available to me when I was in pharmacy school and residency.

And we had Derek on episode 243 where he talked about his non traditional career path, going from a community pharmacy to becoming a software engineer, and then ultimately building his business at Pearls. Other software app based business, I think about PharmaSol and Natalie Parker, graduate of Ohio State, who built PharmaSol with her co founder from MIT.

And PharmaSol is a company that streamlines pharmacy communications with advanced AI. And helps to automate calls and messages with patients, providers, and payers. Really cool example of someone that took their interest with AI and technology and paired it with their background in pharmacy. Another category I think about would be developing a physical product based business.

Now this can come with high risk and [00:24:00] high reward, right? There often is some, some higher, uh, equipment and costs to get started when you talk about a product based business, but two in particular stand out for me, one that’s pharmacy related, one non pharmacy related. One would be Alison Brennan, who we had on episode 180 of the podcast, where we talked about her journey, where she used her pharmacy skills to start her skincare company called Emma Gene Co.

And she started the skincare company out of her house while she was working full time and then eventually part time as a hospital administrator. Eventually she left that work to work full time on the skincare business. Now has her own team, has a warehouse, business is doing really well. Really cool example of a product based business.

The other one I think about here would be Prickly. Prickly is a cactus, uh, base, uh, beverage company. And a shout out to Quan Yang and his team and his co founder Mo who have built Prickly. We had Quan on episode 289, talking about how they built that. What was the vision behind it? Why did they do it? Uh, [00:25:00] really cool example of a pharmacist that appeared on Shark Tank and was able to leverage their entrepreneurial interest to build a product, uh, in what is a very competitive market, right?

The beverage industry. And last, but certainly not least, I think about some of the non pharmacy Uh entrepreneurs that are out there or the side hustlers that are out there as well Individuals like landon connor who’s a pharmacist who has a passion for photography and has built a successful photography business I think about pharmacist stephanie roberts who built an apothecary art business.

I think about pharmacist rosie chun who built a calligraphy Artist business successful business out in California that does a lot of events and high end calligraphy work for celebrities and Corporations again several different ways. There is no one right way, right? The purpose of me sharing these was to give you some examples and hopefully spark some creativity ideas of pharmacists That yes many of who have stayed in their pharmacy careers But are also building some really [00:26:00] cool things on the side or eventually some of those Were were evolved into a business 

now here’s the kicker when it comes to earning additional income, whatever avenue that might be, whether it’s growing our compensation, perhaps generating income through real estate investing, whether passive or active or generating income through a side hustle or business that extra income while it’s nice, and we can apply it towards certain goal, that extra income itself.

Is not where the real wealth building potential happens, right? Let me give you an example. If, if you were to take an extra 10, 000 that you earn and you apply it towards a, let’s just say a student loan debt payment, that’s at 6%, and there’s certainly a time and place for that. So don’t, don’t mishear me on this, but in that instance.

The value of that extra 10, 000 is limited, although valuable, limited to paying down that debt by 10, 000 and any of the interest that we would save that would have otherwise accumulated, but over time is we’re able to build a [00:27:00] strong financial foundation. If we can turn that extra income into assets that will produce further income and hopefully do so at a rate that compounds over time, that’s where we really start to see the money.

Working for us. Real wealth building potential happens when you take income from these streams and have that money growing and working for you. So what does that look like? Again, lots of ways that you can do this, but for me, it has included turning extra income from different sources into more traditional compounding assets, right?

Like equities inside of a 401k or four or three B IRA, HRA, HSA, taking that income and investing it as a hard money lender for others that are doing real estate investing, taking that extra income and purchasing a cash flowing. Appreciating property, taking that income and building equity and another business.

taking that income and investing in other businesses and taking [00:28:00] that income and growing an existing business, therefore increasing the value or the equity of that business over time. Those examples I think are really where you start to see the flywheel of how that income and taking off the ceiling of your income, how that income can be leveraged.

Towards that longer term plan to building wealth. So as we wrap up, let me leave you with a few questions of reflection. As you think about how to apply this in your own financial plan. Number one, do you believe that the income that you have and your potential of income for the most part is fixed? If so, why is that the case?

Where does that mindset come from? I think it’s really important to explore that. Second question. If you work for a traditional W 2 job, are you being compensated fairly for the value that you’re bringing? If not, what has been holding you back from asking and negotiating additional compensation? And number three, what opportunities [00:29:00] are there for building wealth?

Investing in experiences and giving beyond those that I mentioned throughout this episode. And if you have an idea, as I mentioned at the beginning of something you’re doing or something, you know, someone else is doing, send us an email at info. At your financial pharmacist. com. Thank you so much for listening to this week’s episode of the podcast.

If you like what you heard, do us a favor, leave us a rating and review on Apple podcasts, which will help other pharmacists find the show. And finally, an important reminder that the content in the podcast is provided for informational purposes only, and is not intended to provide and should not be relying on for investment or any other advice for more information on this.

You can visit your financial pharmacist. com forward slash disclaimer. Thanks so much for listening. Have a great rest of your week.

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