YFP 365: Millionaire Theme Hour: From $0 to 7 Figure Pharmacist with Mike Byers


Mike Byers, PharmD shares how he was able to achieve financial freedom and replace his retail pharmacist income through savings and real estate investments.

Episode Summary

In this episode, Michael Byers, PharmD shares how he was able to achieve financial freedom and step away from his job as a retail pharmacist at age 42. Mike outlines how he went from a position of financial weakness to a position of financial strength through frugality and real estate investing. A father of two young boys, Mike talks about the importance of having options and flexibility in this season as he and his wife raise their family.

About Today’s Guest

Mike Byers is a 2008 graduate of the University of Pittsburgh School of Pharmacy. He spent 16 years as a retail pharmacist for Giant Eagle where he worked as a staff pharmacist, a pharmacy team leader and a floater. After successfully investing in real estate for over 10 years, Mike decided to take a break from pharmacy in 2023 to spend time with his wife and two young boys. He loves his family, houses, outdoor adventure, and trying to find the right balance between YOLO and delayed gratification.  He can be found on Instagram @DIYrentalGuy.

Key Points from the Episode

  • Pharmacist’s financial journey to seven figures, early retirement, and mindset shifts. [0:00]
  • Financial journey after graduation, including materialism, divorce, and saving for retirement. [5:59]
  • Saving money, investing, and finding balance in life. [13:58]
  • Real estate investing, personal growth, and overcoming setbacks. [23:17]
  • Building wealth through real estate investing and managing cash flow. [28:54]
  • Financial independence, real estate investing, and career development. [33:12]

Episode Highlights

“You have to be honest with yourself and say, what am I doing now? What is the result going to be? If I’m saving so much that it’s driving me crazy, the result is you’re going to go crazy. But for me, the end result was adventure.” – Mike Byers [20:51]

“I mean, just because you go down a path of a certain savings rate doesn’t mean you have to stay there, you can make adjustments.” – Mike Byers [21:41]

“What I’m looking at is that I have this money saved because I was diligent in being able to save, what does the next 10 years look like? Am I going to sacrifice weekends with my family and nights in order to have one or two extra million dollars?” – Mike Byers [32:07]

“And that’s something that you think about when you turn a certain age and you start wondering how much more do I really need to be comfortable after 65. I don’t want to be self-insuring myself if there’s an insurance product or an annuity that you can buy that would serve that same purpose.” – Mike Byers [32:52]

Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode

Episode Transcript

Tim Ulbrich  00:00

Hey everybody, Tim Ulbrich here and thank you for listening to the YFP Podcast where each week we strive to inspire and encourage you on your path towards achieving financial freedom. This episode we have a millionaire theme hour featuring Mike a 42 year old retired work optional pharmacist living in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. We discuss the highs and lows of his journey as he looks back, including how he felt trapped by big fixed expenses as a new graduate, why his early savings paid off big 20 years later, how his mindset shifted over time, why his real estate investing played an important role in his journey, ultimately replacing his pharmacist income, and why patience and short term frugality and sacrifice were key ingredients to his success. 

Tim Ulbrich  00:41

Now, before we jump into today’s episode, I have a hard truth for you to hear. Making a six figure income is not a financial plan. And we’ll hear that on today’s episode. Yes, you’ve worked hard to get where you are, yes, you’re earning to get income. But if you ever wondered, Am I on track to retire? How do I prioritize and fund all of these competing financial goals that I have? How do I plan financially for big upcoming life events and changes like moving, having a child, changing jobs, getting married, or retiring? And perhaps why am I not as far along financially at this point in my career, as I thought I would be? The answer may be that your six figure income is not a financial plan. Yes, as a pharmacist, you have an incredible tool in your toolbox and that’s your salary. But without a vision and an intentional plan that good income will only go so far. That’s in part why we started your financial pharmacists back in 2015. At YFP we support pharmacists at every stage of their career to take control their finances, reach their financial goals and build wealth through comprehensive fee only financial planning and tax planning. Our team of certified financial planners and tax professionals work with pharmacists all across the United States and helps our clients set their future selves up for success. While living a rich life today. You can learn more and book a free discovery call by visiting yourfinancialpharmacist.com/learn. Again, that’s yourfinancialpharmacist.com/learn. Alright, let’s jump into my interview with Mike. 

Tim Ulbrich  02:11

Mike, welcome to the show.

Mike Byers  02:13

Hey, I’m happy to be here.

Tim Ulbrich  02:14

Before we jump into your financial journey and the path of becoming a seven figure pharmacist, tell us more about your career in pharmacy. What led you into the profession? Where do you go to school? When did you graduate and the type that you have work you’ve been doing since? 

Mike Byers  02:28

I think I started off like most folks going from high school to college, I went to the University of Pittsburgh. I started there. And of course, I was thinking about medicine, dentistry, pharmacy as my options and I was thinking about the path to get there. I don’t quite know what I wanted to do. My life kind of hit a roadblock sophomore year, I have a condition called ulcerative colitis. And I had to drop out of school at that time. And for a semester I was in the hospital for 16 days. And after the end of it and being in the hospital and experiencing things firsthand, I said, I think being a doctor is too hard for me. I think it’s it’s just not in the cards for what I have going on. And I didn’t know at the time that this disease wouldn’t be a huge part of my life. I found medicines over the years to control things. But I was also still dating my high school sweetheart at the time. And oddly enough, her father was a pharmacist. He owned an independent pharmacy. And I thought why not. So I finished my undergrad, I got a degree in economics and also a minor in engineering. And I went to pharmacy school from there.

Tim Ulbrich  03:54

And after graduation, those that are native to your area or where I lived for 10 plus years in Northeast Ohio, they’ll recognize the name Giant Eagle, but others will not. So tell us more about the work that you’ve been doing with Giant Eagle after graduation. 

Mike Byers  04:09

Sure. So that was an exciting time to be in pharmacy school. I mean, you were going to school, you were learning things that were helping people and developing these skills and it was very fulfilling and the whole time, salaries were going up and you hear you would hear interesting things like the Alaska deal and all the things you’ve probably heard about it that time. But I did graduate and I worked for Giant Eagle. I was an intern there and stayed on as a staff pharmacist. I had some experience leading three different stores, which I learned a ton from and I was also floater and then staff again. So it was about 20 years from the time that I signed on as an intern to last year when I did resign.

Tim Ulbrich  04:59

Mike is a fellow 2008 grad. I graduated from Ohio Northern, I remember those times, right? It was the sign-on bonuses with the cars and classmates showing up with new cars in the parking lot and the Alaska deal, which I never saw on paper, but I heard of it as well. So we’ll share with our listeners, what is that all about? What I remember if it was, it was a big retail pharmacy chain that was offering a three year deal in Alaska for a million dollars. That’s what I remember the deal. 

Mike Byers  05:28

The only thing I remember is sitting in class and hearing somebody turn around in their seat and say, I heard this. I heard a million dollars, three years. I’m gonna do it. And then I’m going to retire. Yeah, so maybe that planted the seed for some kind of early retirement financial independence at that point. 

Tim Ulbrich  05:46

Nonetheless, it’s a very different time right here in 2024. So we’re going to dig into your current state of being a seven figure pharmacist achievement, financial independence, getting to this point of being work optional. We’ll talk about how you did that, and how real estate and traditional investments played into that. But I want to go all the way back to 2008 when you graduated with a net worth of zero, clean slate, no mounds of student loan debt, right, our listeners today are graduating $150k, $200k, you know, smaller debt loads, some might look at that and say, Hey, net worth, is your graduation, smooth sailing, but not so fast. Right? Tell us more.

Mike Byers  06:23

Yeah, before you throw tomatoes at the podcast, I did have a little bit of student debt. Which it was I mean, the difference between what I was making what I was spending, I can’t even remember how I paid it off. It was about $20,000. But I did go through a divorce, which cost some money, and I did have a real estate deal go south where I lost a lot of money. So I have had to dig myself out several times since 2008. But yes, I did. I did graduate with roughly a clean slate. And worked my way up to now where my passive income through real estate pretty much replaces my salary at 30 hours a week as a pharmacist.

Tim Ulbrich  07:13

What were some of the decisions, and we’ll dig deeper as we go throughout. But what were some of the decisions that you made early on as a new practitioner, you know, as it relates to car purchases and other things. You know, one of the things you shared with me prior to recording was that quote, “I became obnoxiously materialistic, which I partly blame for my marriage falling apart.” What do you mean by that? And how did this ultimately, you know, play into not only the financial plan, obviously the relationship but what would be the beginning of of, you know, that trench that you would eventually dig yourself out of.

Mike Byers  07:44

So like, like we mentioned, it was exciting times to graduate with bonuses. And we I graduated and I was married, we got married the last year of school during rotations. And we were living in her parent’s basement, not because we needed to financially, but because we weren’t sure where we were going to end up for her job. But I bought an Audi. A luxurious Audi. While it wasn’t even three months after I graduated, still living in my in-laws basement, bought this fancy new car. And it just seemed like the thing I was supposed to do. Long story short, I mean, we eventually moved. She got a job north of the city, we moved into a nice townhome rental. Not much longer after that, I’m on Zillow shopping for a nice, big, fancy house. So the fancy house came not much long after that. And I did become obnoxiously materialistic. And it wasn’t long after I moved into that house where I saw the house on the next street. He said, Gee, I wonder when or what it would take to get that bigger house. And that was just the way I was operating and had we not gotten divorced, I could still be operating that way. But it was just a mindset where I blame being really materialistic 10%. 90% we were young and ultimately not right for each other. But it wasn’t much longer after living in that house a couple of years where the bomb went off and divorced, trying to pick up the pieces again.

Tim Ulbrich  09:34

So you don’t go from that point to becoming a seven figure pharmacist by continuing that mindset and continuing those behaviors. So something shifted, something happened from a mindset and a behavior perspective. It sounds like that was the divorce. Tell us more about that.

Mike Byers  09:50

It absolutely was. I realized that I didn’t need a big house and a fancy car to be happy. I said the exact opposite – how little can I survive on? Or how little can I have material wise in order to live a happy life and I somehow found a studio apartment in the city, it was 350ish square feet. When my mom first saw it the first time, took her breath away, because it was just that small – the bedroom was in the kitchen. Yeah. And those were those were happy times. I lived that way for a couple years. And it felt really comfortable. But I still wasn’t saving. A couple years goes by and I’m like, well, kind of on this path where my rent is relatively cheap, my salary is relatively high. Why don’t I have a savings goal? Because I didn’t feel like I was doing the right thing at the time. So my goal that year, I think this was about 2012. So a couple years after divorce four years after graduating, I decided I wanted to save in addition to 401k, I wanted to save $2,000 a month. And each month I would play the game, if I wanted to buy something I worked extra. If it looked like I wasn’t going to hit my goal I cut back. And that’s what I did for that year to in addition to maxing out 401k to build up some cash savings.

Tim Ulbrich  10:11

So if I’m following correctly from jump street, you’re maxing out your 401k. So you’re leveraging the tax advantage account. And then you hit this point, shortly after the divorce four years into your pharmacy career. You’re in this studio apartment 350 square feet, and you realize, Hey, I’ve got an opportunity to more aggressively save. And so you set this target, which you know, to be on, I mean, $2,000 as a percentage of one’s take home pay, that’s a big chunk of money. And you see this a lot in the financial independence, retire early the FIRE community where there’s very aggressive savings rates, right, you’re in your early 40s. So to get to a net worth of seven figure plus, it’s going to take a substantial amount of savings to do that at an early age. So did your savings rate stay there? What did the trajectory look like as you were building that over time?

Mike Byers  12:21

So I hit that number, okay. And I was able to save about $25,000 that year. So I built up my cash savings. When I after going through the divorce, I didn’t have that cash savings. And I built that up and again, I kind of felt comfortable like, Hey, I hit that goal for that year, and I got a new apartment, that apartment had one bedroom. Not necessarily more happy in that apartment, but it was more expensive. And it seemed nicer. So at that point, it was a little more rent, and I wasn’t saving money and about a year had gone by and I said to myself, What am I what am I doing now? I mean, I had this surplus, and I was on a good path. So I for whatever reason started Googling. I figured it was taxes. I said I typed into Google, “single high earner how to save on taxes.” Okay, so real estate comes up. And I’d always been interested in homes. I love home remodeling and you know, watching a little bit too much HGTV at the time. But the next day, my friend came over to watch a football game. Oddly enough, he says my mom was thinking about selling the duplex. I had known him in college. And my ears perked up because why not? So, long story short, I fell ass backwards into owning a duplex. 

Tim Ulbrich  13:58

Little house hack. 

Mike Byers  13:59

Yeah. House hack. Yeah. 

Tim Ulbrich  14:01

How did  that one work out? Tell us about that is an investment property?

Mike Byers  14:06

I mean, it was it was a huge learning curve. So I said yes. I said I contacted his mom. We did the whole thing without an agent. It needed a lot of repairs and the whole thing flooded while we were in escrow. The pipes burst it was during winter the heat wasn’t on. So I had to jump into renovating and immediately kind of learning how to increase the value of the property. So I did that. And you know, I went from a studio apartment to half of a duplex even though it didn’t have air conditioning. It felt I mean, I felt amazing. I renovated it. It was nice. And I was just living in the duplex I was charging downstairs rent that mostly covered my mortgage. And it was shortly after that time when I discovered Mister Money Mustache. I’m sure a lot of people that you’ve talked to have started that or had that at some point in their journey. But that’s when things really started to go pretty quickly and I’d love to talk about that experience.

Tim Ulbrich  15:25

Yeah, and we’ll dive into that deeper and we’ll link in the show notes and Mister Money Mustache. For those that aren’t already familiar, I suspect many people are, great resource great blog will also link to other episodes, we talked about house hacking for those that that’s a new term. The idea is that you typically lots of different ways to house hack but you know, the most common we live in a duplex triplex or quad, you live in one unit, and you rent out the remaining units, obviously trying to generate income streams and hopefully cover a portion or majority of your mortgage payment in turn your what you think of often separately, your primary residence and then investment properties, bundle those together. And there’s some creative financing strategies of ways that you can, you can do that. And I want to come back in a little bit to talk more about real estate because I know it’s been such a big part of your plan. I do want to go back to the savings rate piece because I know you started with that $2,000 month goal. You shared with me in advance that eventually you’re pushing that up closer to $4000 to $5,000 a month. A lot of pharmacists hear these aggressive savings rates. And they’re like, how? Right, how? You know, you think of a typical pharmacists income, take home pay $7000 to $7500, maybe $8,000 a month, depending on what they do. You look at large fixed costs, like house, cars, student loan payments, daycare, childcare, other expenses. And we work with many pharmacists where there’s just not a whole lot of margin, at least in current expenses. So give us a little bit more of the behind the scenes of how you were able to actually allocate a large percentage of your income? What sacrifices did that require? And then where were you putting that money? I heard early on it was cash savings beyond the 401k. But was that in IRAs? Was that brokerage accounts? Where were you putting that money? 

Mike Byers  17:13

As far as stocks and retirement accounts, it’s just 401k. The Roth and the traditional just, I was saving so much at the time, the income limits, and then the limit that you could put in just seem too small for me. So how do you save? I mean, you mentioned that the three biggest things housing, transportation, and whether or not you have kids, I guess your third one would be food? If you don’t have kids, that third one, if you do is day care. Yeah. So house hacking. That’s the big way to save on your housing costs. So at one point, my housing costs were zero, because the rent went up. And I was saving at that time, I had paid off the loan on my car, and I kept it. So a lot of folks will pay off one vehicle and buy in the next or keep buying new vehicles that are pretty, pretty frequent pace, but if you keep your vehicle eight, nine, ten years, when you get to that point, it’s paid off. You can save a lot of money. So I was saving probably in the realm of $5,000 a month. So that included a paid off vehicle. It included rent from downstairs, a little bit of overtime manager salary. And saving on food. I mean, just not going out to eat a lot. That was a big thing for me. I mean, you can play the game where you get pretty extreme. And it was too much for me. I mean, there was one point where I was calculating the cost of the extra food I would have to consume to walk to work versus the cost per mile of gas if I had driven so what I was doing with that $5,000 a month, I was putting it all in my checking account. Okay, fine. It was just building out pretty quickly. I called the mortgage company and I said, hey, this PMI insurance. I have, you know, a certain amount of equity at this point. Can we make that go away? And they said no. I said why? And they said, Well, this is an FHA loan. 

Tim Ulbrich  19:26

Yeah, right. Did it. On my first home. Didn’t know that.

Mike Byers  19:30

Yeah, blame myself. I blame the mortgage seller, whatever. I was so angry by that. And I was saving so much money that I paid off. I think it was $100,000 loan balance relatively quickly, like within a year and a half. Just because I was mad about that. And I wanted to make $120 a month go away. So I was putting it back into the real estate.

Tim Ulbrich  19:55

Got it. Okay. You mentioned something really interesting. You talked about of extremes, right? And you see this sometimes in the FIRE community and and let’s, let’s say out there and everyone’s on their own journey, everyone’s situation is different. You know, everyone’s cost a living expenses are different family situation is different. So everyone has to figure out what is the journey and pathway that allows them to achieve the goals that they want to achieve. But those that are on this financial independence, retire early or retire optional journey, you know, there is what you call the potential for this frugal fatigue. Right. And I love that term, because it’s real. And there’s a time and season for it, for that grind. And there’s a fatigue that comes with that as well. And so, my question for you is, how did you combat this? When you recognize that? What did you do to say, Hey, this is real, and I’m achieving all these great goals, and I’m saving a lot per month. But this fatigue is real. How did you combat that fatigue?

Mike Byers  20:51

I mean, you have to be honest with yourself and say, What am I doing now? What is the result gonna be? I mean, if I’m saving so much that it’s driving me crazy. The result is you’re gonna go crazy. But for me, I would. For me, it was adventure. So when I got pretty fatigued with the daily saving, and it wasn’t like I was living this life where I was, you know, things were relatively scarce and I wasn’t having fun. But at time, like I bought an Airstream when you’re holding back so much, and you’re just kind of yearning for adventure, you see a commercial for the new Airstream. You just buy it. And you can adjust. I mean, just because you go down a path of a certain savings rate doesn’t mean you have to stay there, you can make adjustments. I ended up selling it a few years, a few years later. And the money that I lost, I guess you could say last was a great experience. So you just keep adjusting yourself and you have honest conversations with you or with your spouse if you’re married on okay. What are we saving? What experiences aren’t we having? Right? What is that going to result in in the future? Because you could have two different ends of the spectrum. You could have YOLO. And I know people like this and they’re happy. You only live once, they’re spending their whole paycheck. They’re not thinking too much about the future and holding back on some things. They’re just living life now. But there’s the other end of the spectrum, which is deferred gratification. Yep, either one of those two, seems a little extreme. And you could get screwed either way. So if you’re YOLO, and not saving anything, and leveraging all your salary and income to have fun today and you live to 100. I mean, you could be screwed. Sixty-five When you start to not have energy and ability to work, I mean, yep. But if you defer everything and you die at 50, you’re screwed as well. So you have to find your balance in the middle and continually be honest with yourself and have the conversations with your spouse on what the right balance is.

Tim Ulbrich  23:17

Ton of wisdom there, Mike. And there are several resources that are coming to mind that I feel like of what you shared. You’re kind of pulling from, you know, some different philosophies and putting it together. What we often say is, hey, we’ve got to figure out how we can save and invest for the future to take care of our future selves, but also live a rich life today. Both of those things can happen and be true. While that looks different for everyone. And, you know, I’m thinking of some of the resources that have influenced my journey. Rich Dad, Poor Dad, The Millionaire Next Door or Die with Zero by Bill Perkins. 

Mike Byers  23:45

I just read that.

Tim Ulbrich  23:47

Bigger Pockets. Like, I kind of hear a little bit of pieces of these. And what I love is you’ve taken these teachings, and probably many others, and said, Hey, this is what is ideal for me and my journey. And I think the way you articulated that is beautiful, and I want to talk more about the real estate. So 2012 You buy the duplex sounds like that was a good move in the house hack. You weren’t a one and done real estate investor. 2019, you decide to do a deep dive deeper dive into real estate beyond that initial house hack, which ultimately, when we talk about current state would allow you to cut cut back your work altogether to replace that income, but initially go from that full time to less or full time 30 hours a week. Where did that motivation and drive come from? Do that deeper dive in real estate and tell us more about that second investment, the one that you you kicked off in 2019.

Mike Byers  24:41

So I had lived in the duplex for about five years 2013 to 2018. I had gotten out of a four year relationship at the time and I’m driving to visit my brother in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. It’s pretty long drive so I’m doing a lot of podcasts listening and I discover some things was about real estate. So again, I was kind of on the path. But I listened to some information on podcasts that said, well, you have another opportunity to continue down this path. I mean, I was sit still saving a bunch of money living there and earning a good salary. By the end of that trip, I decided that I wanted to buy another property. I wanted to continue, there was no, there was no reason not to grow this. And at that time, I felt like I had a little more tools and resources and experience to go down that road. So I bought another house, I was able to pay cash without a loan because of my savings rate over those last five years. And I lived in it, renovated it. I rented it out for a decent price. And I hit a certain number that I wanted to hit. And I thought I was the King of Real Estate in Pittsburgh. I bought another one. And before I was finished with that one, and ultimately ended up in another low point in my life where I just had too much going on. And I ended up selling that for a loss because it was just too overwhelming. But I, you know, these are the things you think about long car rides and long bike rides. It’s like what is the purpose of what I’m doing? And I had said to myself, I have this duplex, it has the opportunity to give me two rents. And I have the opportunity, because nothing’s really tying me down, to buy more real estate. And I think in order to do that, I need to cut back hours. So eventually, I asked to be cut down to 30. I got a really great store where I work three days a week, every fifth weekend. So that gave me the time and the freedom to eventually build more real estate. And the salary that I’ve lost over that amount of time, it’s, it’s really not a big deal. Because what you’re able to build with your time, or the freedom that you’re able to have is worth the cost. 

Tim Ulbrich  27:17

In terms of your portfolio, you started with the duplex, you buy another one in 2019. Sounds like that goes well. The one after that not so much. You mentioned a low point, what what did you do to kind of pick yourself back up and say, Hey, maybe I’m not the king of real estate in Pittsburgh, but I also have something here to offer. And I think I’m on to something in terms of building some real assets here. How did you get out of that trough and really get yourself back in the game?

Tim Ulbrich  27:46

And then that portfolio, the current day portfolio you just mentioned, has gotten to the point where work is optional. So you went from 40 hours a week to 30 hours a week. And now that portfolio is generating income such that if you need to, want to work in the future great, you can or if you want to pick up extra hours, but you’re not in a position of needing that income. 

Mike Byers  27:46

I mean, thank God, I met my wife at that time. Because she gave me the confidence and believed in me. And I’m the type of person that if someone believes I can do something I could, I could climb a mountain pretty easily. Amazing, amazing luck that I found such an amazing person. And she believed. She knew what I had done in the past with the single family home and the duplex and the skills that I have built and the knowledge that I had built during this time. And sometimes all you need is a partner that can believe in you and do it with you. So we basically went on a buying spree and use the equity in those two homes to buy four more homes and rent those out. And that’s what our portfolio looks like today. Four single families and a duplex plus our primary house.

Mike Byers  29:14

Exactly. 

Tim Ulbrich  29:15

Okay. Yeah, man. That’s awesome. Congratulations on the journey all the work.

Mike Byers  29:20

Yeah. So that was a goal. And things change when you have kids. And we had two children born pretty close together. And we were coming towards the end of my wife’s maternity leave for our second child and we were deciding what to do and it was a decision for me to stay home and not work. And the investing in assets and growing those assets and having those assets give you a return to buy more is what allowed us to have a one income family.

Tim Ulbrich  29:58

And your boys are how old now? 

Mike Byers  30:00

They’re one and two. 

Tim Ulbrich  30:01

All right. All right. So you’ve got options for time and flexibility schedule with them. That’s cool. If we zoom out for a moment, and look at your pathway to becoming a seven figure pharmacist, and now looking at your asset base as a whole, not specific numbers, but just general percentages, if you were to break that down between, you know, more traditional, right 401k types of dollars versus the assets that you have in real estate, or potentially others that I’m not yet aware of, like, how is that net worth broken down?

Mike Byers  30:36

I would say 60 to 70% real estate. Probably 60% of real estate. And then the rest is in 401k.

Tim Ulbrich  30:46

Okay. Okay. And we haven’t even touched on obviously, a whole nother aspect of the real estate, you know, you’ve got your cash flow you’re generating now there’s future appreciation, there’s tax advantages, if anyone wants to dive into that deeper, Tax Free Wealth by Tom Wheelwright, great resource to kind of just open your eyes a little bit if, if that’s not something you’ve you’ve considered before. 

Mike Byers  31:08

I mean, for our real estate specifically, I mean, if you think about it, there’s three, three or four different ways where you make money. So there’s cash flow, there’s appreciation, and there’s loan pay down. So what we shoot for with our properties is $1,500 a month. $500 is $400 or $500 is cash flow. $500 is being paid down by the tenant and then above $500, is appreciating, and when you multiply that by several properties, you get that automatic savings in those two parts, you get the automatic savings where the tenant is paying it down, and it’s appreciating in value. And then you can use the cash flow to reinvest or if it’s a different season of your life where you need to live on cash flow, you can do that you can take a break from work, you can take a sabbatical. And it’s it just provides you options. Right now, what I’m looking at is, what kind of options has what I’ve built in the past, giving me to live a great life with like I, like you mentioned the book Die with Zero, you get to 40 years old, and you start thinking, Okay, I have this money saved because I was diligent and being able to save, what does the next 10 years look like? Am I going to sacrifice weekends with my family and nights in order to have one or two extra million dollars? You know, maybe your kids and your spouse they want you home? So that you know you can you can live a different life with experiences. And that’s something that you think about when you turn a certain age and you start wondering how much more do I really need to be comfortable after 65. I don’t want to be self insuring myself if there’s a maybe there’s an insurance product or an annuity that you can buy, that would serve that same purpose.

Tim Ulbrich  33:11

And options is the word I hear. Flexibility is the word I hear. And it’s interesting when I polled our community about the idea of financial independence, whether or not they want to retire early. You know, some people love what they’re doing. Some people don’t like what they’re doing. Some people might want part time or to pivot. But the goal of financial independence, I think, is one that resonates with people as a whole. And when I asked that question, you know, what excites you? What motivates you around that concept of financial independence? It’s options. It’s flexibility. It’s being able to choose and to have choice in those things along the way, which I think your story is such a good example of that as well. Mike, when you look back on this journey, and one of the things I appreciate is in the transparency and the vulnerability. You know, we could look at the current state and say Mike is crushing it, and you’ve done incredibly well. But there’s been highs and there’s been lows along the way. And there’s been a lot of learning that’s happened. As you look back on that journey from net worth of zero to becoming, you know, well into a seven figure pharmacist, what lessons do you take away as you reflect back on that, that you can share with our listeners?

Mike Byers  34:20

I think a good lesson to learn is have honest conversations with yourself about the alternatives. So if you’re on the path, and you’re making and not saving, if you’re making a certain amount and you’re not saving a whole lot and you get to the point where maybe you’re thinking there’s something more I can do. Maybe I can save a little bit more or maybe I can make investments outside of my 401k, they’re gonna be a good return and give me cash. flow like real estate. Just have honest conversation about what the alternative is. Because sometimes the alternative is you get stuck for a long period of time in what you’re doing because you didn’t take those five years to save diligently, or to pursue something that you’re interested in as far as a side hustle or take that job. So I sit down, evaluate what you’re doing and what path you’re on. And where that’s gonna lead to 10, 20, 30 years down the road. Five or 10? Whatever.

Tim Ulbrich  35:44

Yeah, and I hear a lot of patience in your story. I hear a lot of, you know, seasons of sacrifice, but also seasons of perspective, and kind of reevaluating where am I going? What are we trying to do? I’m curious, as you look out, you mentioned this time window into the future, as you look out, where do you see your real estate portfolio going? You know, now that it’s gotten to a point of replacing your income, do you see yourself kind of staying put in this model where you’ve got a duplex and several single family homes? Do you see an expansion within that same investment category? Are you interested in, you know, commercial or short term rentals? Like, what? Where are you envisioning the future of the real estate portfolio?

Mike Byers  36:23

So I’m envisioning, I mean, my, my vision is to work on it three to four hours a day, from a coffee shop and manage the investments. So I wish I could give you a better answer. And part of stepping back from the pharmacy job and trying new things is this level of uncertainty and really uncomfortability like, things aren’t amazingly comfortable right now. I mean, I’ve really had to unwind some of the programming that 20 years of retail pharmacy put in me, so it’s tough, and I can’t tell you exactly where I want to be in this is a period where I am. But I mentioned the word sabbatical. So it’s, it’s a period of time where you’re not forced to work, where, you know, thank God, my wife is just so amazing and understanding. You can take the time to figure out your next path. And instead of working nights and weekends for the next 10 years to figure out how to have your kids experience and watch you live an amazing life. So that’s an evolving thing. And maybe we’ll catch up in five years, and I can tell you what it evolved to. I you really have to think about what your passion and purpose is. And sometimes you look at 100 jobs on on LinkedIn or Indeed, pharmacy/medical related and you just can’t see yourself doing that. So I’m trying to find my passion and purpose right now. And I really think it is in real estate, whether it’s rental real estate, commercial, vacation rental or flipping. I’m trying to figure that out. 

Tim Ulbrich  38:19

And what excites me about that is I sense this is a season of, you know, some of that deep reflection and figuring out the next steps. You use the word sabbatical as well. But you know, another tip of the cap to the work that you’ve done, you’ve put yourself in a financial position, with the support of your family to be able to take the space to think and think strategically, right? And that’s an amazing opportunity, but it didn’t fall in your lap. You worked incredibly hard for that to happen. So congratulations, Mike on on the journey. I do look forward to following up and following your journey. Along the way. I know it’s been an inspiration to me, I’m sure it will to our listeners as well. So thank you so much for taking time to come on the show. 

Tim Ulbrich  39:01

As we conclude this week’s podcast, an mportant reminder that the content on this show is provided to you for informational purposes only and is not intended to provide and should not be relied on for investment or any other advice. Information in the podcast and corresponding materials should not be construed as a solicitation or offer to buy or sell any investment or related financial products. We urge listeners to consult with a financial advisor with respect to any investment. Furthermore, the information contained in our archived newsletters, blog posts and podcasts is not updated and may not be accurate at the time you listen to it on the podcast. Opinions and analyses expressed herein are solely those of Your Financial Pharmacist unless otherwise noted and constitute judgments as of the dates published. Such information may contain forward looking statements, which are not intended to be guarantees of future events. Actual results could differ materially from those anticipated in the forward looking statements. For more information, please Is yourfinancialpharmacist.com/ disclaimer Thank you again for your support of the Your Financial Pharmacist Podcast Have a great rest of your week.

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YFP 364: Starting a Nonprofit: An Interview with Founder of Pharm to Tables, John Muchka, PharmD, BCPS


Dr. John Muchka, Founder of Pharm to Tables, talks about how he started the non-profit and its mission of helping end the hunger crisis in local communities.

This episode is brought to you by First Horizon

Episode Summary

In this episode, Tim talks with Dr. John Muchka, Founder of Pharm To Tables, a charitable organization uniting pharmacy professionals in a singular, focused mission of helping end the hunger crisis of our local communities

Dr. Muchka talks about how his service learning project during pharmacy school inspired the idea for Pharm To Tables, the why behind his passion to end hunger in local communities, how he was able to get his vision off the ground, and the lessons he has learned along the way.

About Today’s Guest

Dr. John Muchka received his Bachelor’s degree in biochemistry from the University of Wisconsin- Madison followed by his Doctor of Pharmacy from South University School of Pharmacy in 2010.

Dr. Muchka is a seasoned clinical pharmacist with over 13 years of extensive experience in the healthcare field. Throughout his career, he has demonstrated a steadfast commitment to advancing pharmacy practice and improving patient care.

As a Pharmacy Residency Program Director, Dr. Muchka plays a pivotal role in shaping the next generation of pharmacy professionals. His dedication to mentorship and education has empowered countless pharmacists to excel in their careers and make meaningful contributions to the field.

In addition to his role as a clinical pharmacist and Residency Program Director, Dr. Muchka is also the Co-founder and president of Pharm to Tables Charitable Organization Inc. Under his visionary leadership, Pharm to Tables has emerged as a driving force in promoting overall community health by helping to end food insecurity.

Dr. John Muchka is a respected voice within the pharmacy community on a local and national level. He currently serves on the Pharmacy Society of Wisconsin Board of Directors. Dr. Muchka also represents Wisconsin in the American Society of Health-System Pharmacists House of Delegates. Through his active involvement in these organizations, Dr. Muchka advocates for policies and initiatives that elevate the profession of pharmacy and enhance the quality of patient care on a local, national and global scale.

Outside of work, John loves spending time outdoors with his wife Lindsey and two sons, Luke and Noah

Key Points from the Episode

  • Ending hunger in local communities with nonprofit Farm to Tables. [0:00]
  • Career journey from construction to pharmacy, including residency and nonprofit work. [2:59]
  • Starting a nonprofit to address food insecurity. [7:52]
  • Starting a nonprofit to address food insecurity through the pharmacy profession. [12:26]
  • Leveraging pharmacy connections for food donations. [17:11]
  • Nonprofit organization supporting food pantries through pharmacy schools. [21:08]
  • Addressing burnout in healthcare professionals through philanthropic efforts. [27:18]

Episode Highlights

“I said why do you guys come here after school when you could go to Forsyth and and play with some really good competition and the answer is what it was the reason why I started Pharm to Tables. They said, if we didn’t come here, we wouldn’t eat dinner. And when I heard that, I mean, you could have probably seen my heartbreak in front of these kids. And I knew that I had to do something.” – Dr. John Muchka [9:54]

“Because food insecurity is a problem everywhere, not only in urban areas, but also in rural areas, there’s food deserts everywhere. And if we can do something to generate food and or money to help give access to these people who need it, we’re going to improve community health.” – Dr. John Muchka [10:39]

“You know when you have you have an idea that just won’t go away? As you’re laying in bed and you can’t fall asleep? And that’s the one that’s the thought that comes back in your mind. So whether it was a calling or whatever it was, it was it was just something that wouldn’t go away. So it was time to take action on it.” – Dr. John Muchka [12:20]

“I know when you’re a kid, everyone says you know, it’s better to give than to receive. And that’s absolutely true. I mean, makes you feel good. It fills the tank, it gives you more purpose of what you’re doing here.” – Dr. John Muchka [23:09]

“Another thing that I learned was it’s not easy. Nothing’s easy, right? There’s going to be barriers along the way and it would have been easy just to hang it up and say yeah, I had this idea but nothing really came of it. But to have the vision and the foresight to say this could be something that could make a big difference in a lot of people’s lives. And just to keep going, I mean, no doesn’t mean no, it means not right now. And I live by that.” – Dr. John Muchka [24:50]

Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode

Episode Transcript

Tim Ulbrich  00:00

Hey everybody, Tim Ulbrich here and thank you for listening to the YFP Podcast where each week we strive to inspire and encourage you on your path towards achieving financial freedom. This week I interviewed Dr. John Muchka, Founder of Pharm to Tables, a charitable organization uniting pharmacy professionals in a singular focus mission of helping end the hunger crisis of our local communities. We talked about his service learning project during pharmacy school and how that inspired the idea to Pharm to Tables, the why behind John’s passion to end hunger in local communities, how he was able to get his vision off the ground, and the lessons that he has learned along the way. Let’s hear a brief message from today’s sponsor First Horizon, and then we’ll jump into my interview with John Muchka. 

Tim Ulbrich  00:48

Does saving 20% for a down payment on a home feel like an uphill battle? It’s no secret that pharmacists have a lot of competing financial priorities, including high student loan debt, meaning that saving 20% for a down payment on a home may take years. For several years now we’ve been partnering with First Horizon who offers a professional home loan option AKA a doctor or pharmacist loan that requires a 3% downpayment for single family home or a townhome for first time homebuyers, has no PMI and offers a 30 year fixed rate mortgage on home loans up to $766,550 in most areas. The pharmacist home loan is available in all states except Alaska and Hawaii, and can be used to purchase condos as well, however, rates may be higher and a condo review has to be completed. While I’ve personally worked with First Horizon before and had a great experience with Tony and his team, don’t just take it for me. Here’s what Molly from New Berlin, Wisconsin had to say about her experience with First Horizon: “The communication and always being available to talk over the phone was great for us. It also made an impact getting an initial overview and education on the process from gal being able to submit everything electronically made it more efficient.” So if you want to check out the requirements for Pharmacist’s Home Loan from First Horizon and to start the pre-approval process, visit yourfinancialpharmacist.com/home-loan. Again, that’s yourfinancialpharmacist.com/home-loan. 

Tim Ulbrich  02:16

John, welcome to the show. 

Dr. John Muchka  02:18

Thanks, Tim. Happy to be here.

Tim Ulbrich  02:20

Well, I’m excited to have you to share the work that you’re doing and the story of the Pharm to Tables non-profit organization. We’ll get to that here in a little bit. I had the opportunity to meet you actually after I posted something on LinkedIn several months ago that said, Hey, I’d love to hear more about pharmacists that are involved in different philanthropic efforts or running nonprofit organizations. Someone reached out to me say hey, you’ve got to talk to John and hear about the work that he’s doing with Pharm to Tables. So here we are. Before we get into that, though, give us your background and career journey in pharmacy, including what led you into the profession where you went to school and some of the work that you’ve been doing since.

Dr. John Muchka  02:58

Sure. Initially, pharmacy was not on my radar, I come from a blue collar family- construction workers. I have three older brothers that that all work in the construction industry. My parents own a construction company so that was that was the logical next step for me to go just start working right away after high school. But when I was in high school I worked in, in a pharmacy in a in a community pharmacy. A family friend had owned the pharmacy and I worked there and I I enjoyed the work. And when I talked to my parents about maybe next steps, about me going to college and what they thought about it, they were they were on board 100% so I went to University Wisconsin-Madison. I got my undergraduate degree in biochemistry. Still really didn’t know what I was going to do. But then I thought back on my my time as a pharmacy technician, and I was like, you know, let’s let’s give this pharmacy thing ago. Decided to go out of state. I was in Madison for about five years and I was looking to go somewhere else, see another part of the country. So I went to pharmacy school in Savannah, Georgia at South University. Thought I was still going to do the retail pharmacy route until I started doing my appy rotations. And there’s a lot of army bases out there. So a lot of the collaborative practice agreement models where pharmacists ran clinics and I worked in a lot of the hospital settings and I really enjoyed that. So I decided to pursue a PGY1 residency. I was lucky enough to match back home here in Milwaukee at Froedtert and Medical College of Wisconsin. That was in about 2011 I think. After I completed my residency, I wanted to take what I learned at the academic medical center and take that back to the community that I lived in. So I wanted to take the cutting edge pharmacy stuff that we were working on there and take it from here community hospital that might not have the resources or, or the knowledge base of the pharmacists that were working there to implement some of this cool stuff. So I took a job as the 770 D-central pharmacist in the town and a hospital in town I grew up in. My mom was actually a unit clerk at the hospital when I was growing up. So I went back to the hospital that she worked at. And I knew a lot of the people that were still there. And I was able to implement some cool stuff in that in that pharmacy department.

Tim Ulbrich  05:22

Love it. And I love to hear the career journey coming back to home. And many listeners know that I’ve got four boys. So when you shared with me that you have three brothers, I love the brothers story you shared with me when we talked a couple of months ago that one of your brothers said, Hey, I’m not gonna hire you. You need to go to school. Right? Yeah.

Dr. John Muchka  05:41

That was probably the best career decision. Fourth career decision that I had. So yeah, he was looking out for me and he said, Hey, man, we don’t have the brains that you have, you can do the work. The work is great. What we do right now, and if you ever need a job, if it doesn’t work out, you can come back and work for us. But we want you to give it a go doing something else. 

Tim Ulbrich  06:02

Just love that. It’s such a brotherly way of saying like, I love you, I need to encourage you in this direction, I’m not gonna hire you.

Dr. John Muchka  06:13

After I spent some time at the Community Hospital, where where I grew up, there was something missing there in it was not having students in residence. It was a small community hospital, and I was used to that resident learning environment. So I decided to go back to a different teaching hospital within Froedtert and Medical college, it’s in Menomonee Falls, which is a suburb of Milwaukee. So I’ve been there the last nine years. I’m a Clinical Pharmacist there, I’m also the residency program director, we’ve got three residents, that’s one of the highlights of my day to day is watching them and mentoring them. And those aha moments that they have along the way, when when they come in, and they’re so green in July, and then at this point in the year now, I mean, they’re looking for jobs, I’m trying to open up my network to them, and just the growth that you see in those, that short period is amazing. So that’s where I currently am and who knows where the future is gonna take me. Digging what I’m doing right now.

Tim Ulbrich  07:15

Well, let’s talk about the Pharm to Tables organization that you started, I will link to the website in the show notes Pharmtotables.org. Tell us about the purpose of that nonprofit organization that you started. Sure.

Dr. John Muchka  07:29

So the purpose is, I mean, food insecurity is a problem everywhere. And I’ll get into the backstory of it, probably in a little bit here. But you notice that social determinants of health are a big, they have a big impact on overall community health. And I wanted to do something to increase food accessibility to people and not only my community, but the surrounding communities. So we had the idea when when I was in pharmacy school at South University. Part of our curriculum was servant leadership and we had a list of things that we could do. And being naive when I moved out there having only known Madison for the last five years. I just picked a picked a place that was relatively close to my pharmacy school that I could ride my bike to. And I was looking for the most inexpensive apartments to live in. No surprise after I got there, I mean, it was in a lower socioeconomic neighborhood, which I was fine with. But I picked one of the locations it was called the Savannah Baptist Center. And what they did there was mentored kids in the community. It was an after school program. They had a food pantry there and they also had a clothes closet. Miss Alice White was the lady that ran that she ran a pretty tight ship. And she wouldn’t give you access to the after school mentorship program until you earned your keep so for the first few months, I worked in the food pantry in the clothes closet. I made my desires known that I wanted to be with the kids after school, I wanted to mentor them. Some of those kids didn’t have a positive male influence in their life. And I thought I could be that. So after a few months, she gave me permission to start hanging out with the kids after school. I started doing it I think we were we were mandated to go twice a month. I started going two times a week, three times a week because I really enjoyed the work that we did there. And one thing that we did was provided a meal for them before they went home. And I didn’t really think too much about that. Until I started talking to the kids. There were two brothers that I was very close with. They loved basketball and if anyone’s been to Savannah, there’s a big park called Forsyth Park in downtown that that always has games running from sunup to sundown some very competitive games and these two kids were really good at it and I said why do you guys come here after school when you could go to Forsyth and and play  with some really good competition and the answer is what it was the reason why I started Pharm to Tables, they said, if we didn’t come here, we wouldn’t eat dinner. And when I heard that, I mean, you could have probably seen my heartbreak in front of these kids. And I knew that I had to do something. I didn’t know what it was yet. But that night, I went home and I talked to my wife and I said, Lindsey, we need to do something that I told her the story. And she’s like, let’s, let’s do it. Not sure what we’re going to do yet. But, but let’s do it. So I had her support. And that was, that was the dawn of Pharm to Tables, I still didn’t really know what I was doing. But that was the origin of why, why to get it started. Because food insecurity is a problem everywhere, not only in urban areas, but also in rural areas, there’s food deserts everywhere. And if we can do something to generate food and or money to help give access to these people who need it, we’re going to improve community health.

Tim Ulbrich  10:55

And I love that that started with a project right as part of the curriculum that led to a service opportunity, which led to an awareness of a problem, but then ultimately, you decided to take action. And you know, it’s one idea, one thing to have an idea, it’s another thing to take action. And I think especially when you think about starting a nonprofit organization, you know, there are a lot of hoops to jump through, there can be a lot of doubts that come up, even people that are probably like, John, what, what are you doing? There’s lots of resources that already exist, like, why are you trying to solve this problem? Maybe you had some that maybe you didn’t, but moving past that idea to actually execute on that idea is two totally different things. And I think that step is so important, not knowing exactly where it will go. And we’ll talk about kind of the future direction and where things are at today. But tell us about that early decision to actually get started. And what some of those initial steps were that you took.

Dr. John Muchka  11:47

Absolutely, yeah, that’s the biggest step going from idea to actually getting, getting it something tangible to something. And it took it took a long while. So I had the idea, but I was still finishing pharmacy school, and then I was doing my residency. And there were there were a lot of times where I thought, you know, let’s just scrap this idea. It’s a lot of work, I don’t really know what I’m doing yet. I want to just get through my residency, I want to be a pharmacist, I want to help people in that way. But I think I shared this with you in our in our meeting before but you know, you have you have an idea that just won’t go away. As you’re laying in bed and you can’t fall asleep. And that’s the one that’s the thought that comes back in your mind. So whether it was a calling or whatever it was, it was it was just something that wouldn’t go away. So it was time to take action on it. And again, having not having a lot of experience in nonprofits. Thankfully, my wife when we lived in Savannah, she worked for the United Way. And she had some resources and some experience on how to how to start. So I talked to some of her colleagues there and I just started started the paperwork, I didn’t really again know exactly the direction was going to go. But I knew I wanted to do something revolving around food insecurity, and tie that into the pharmacy profession and how we can we can help out. So I formed a board and thankfully, my college roommate from Madison is an attorney. So he helped me out with some of the legal paperwork and filling out those 501C3 national paperwork documents, that’s no joke, and then the articles of incorporation and your bylaws and all the stuff that we had to create before we could do anything before we were acknowledged as a 501 C three that timeline probably took close to a year to get the board set to get all the all the documentation in order and filed. And then we got it we got our employee ID number and we were a 501C3. So at this point, I’m very jacked. I’m ready to take over the world here. problems, though, the first thing I did was go to pharmacy leaders and mentors that I had to pitch my idea to do my elevator speech to them. And I thought it was gonna be I thought it was going to be acceptance across the board, but it wasn’t. There were barriers there. And it was, as you mentioned earlier, like Hey, John, it’s a good idea. But what do I mean what are you doing? You can allocate resources to other nonprofits to help with this and I really had the vision of trying to tie it to the pharmacy professional not not only pharmacy but the healthcare profession. Yeah. So it was a little rocky in the beginning when you hear no from people that you thought you’re gonna hear yes from you had to pivot a little bit and just keep on going and finding the people that that do support the mission that you believe in and found some pharmacy leaders and mentors of mine that were all in and said Great idea. Let’s let’s go How can I help and once you hear how can I help? Then you can definitely start leveraging those relationships and they open their networks to you and talk to other like minded people. And then it started taking off but I didn’t really know where to start with with the food or fund raising abilities. So I started with the pharmacy schools in the state. And I wanted to get students involved in, in servant leadership and giving back to their communities. And once you start that early on, they carry that throughout their their profession, professional career. So I met with the deans of pharmacy, and they were on board. And we had our first what we call the Pharmacy Food Fight. And it’s a competition on who can raise the most food and money. And it was over a week. And I mean, the beginnings were a little meager, I think, I think the first checks that I distributed to the meal programs that we support was $500 each, which I thought was great, I thought when I was over the moon about it. And then the next year, it started to grow. And people were aware of Pharm to Tables, and we got some name recognition. And then we started getting the alumni of those pharmacy schools involved. And that’s when it really started to take off. We also contacted the state organization, so pharmacy society, Wisconsin was an early adopter. And they allowed me to come and give presentations on servant leadership at their annual and summer meetings and have food drives at the actual meetings. So people would come in, bring their non perishable food item, we had options for them to donate online for what we were doing. And that gave me the platform to talk to other pharmacy leaders across the state and get buy in from them. We also have a food drive in October during pharmacy week that spans the state of Wisconsin. All the health systems in the state were involved one way or another. And I think we had about 35 sites that had food drives on their sites, whether it was a community pharmacy, a hospital, pharmacy, the clinics. And we keep all the food that’s donated local to where it where it was donated from. So I help connect the pharmacies or health systems that are not in my immediate area or geographic region, I help connect them to other food pantries that are near them and help build those relationships. So hopefully it continues for years to come.

Tim Ulbrich  17:11

One of the things I was struck by John and what you just shared is, is how critical of a pivot point that mentor mentors plural, really asking the question how I can help, right, because I think one of the questions I like to ask people when they’re beaten up an idea is that we say tell me more. Tell me more, tell me more. And the purpose of that is I don’t know intuitively what they may or may not know, intuitively, but I can help them process by asking questions. And certainly, if there’s an opportunity to help, how can I help, right? And what I heard there was, wow, like now there’s opportunities for networking relationships, and a natural answer to that question is, well, you can help by, you know, making an introduction here or connecting with a health system or connecting with a state organization or connecting with a college. And I would presume that led to the expansion of the work that you’ve been doing, which now is not only in the state of Wisconsin, but you also have expanded outward as well,

Dr. John Muchka  18:05

Right. Yep, we’re in four states now, hopefully adding a fifth this year. And that’s been working with the state organizations. So Sarah Sorum, who is the President at PSW introduced me to Kate Gainer, the Iowa pharmacy, resident, and they loved the idea. So they started doing something in Iowa every year. And then Kate gave me another connection with Anthony Pudlow, who is now in Tennessee, he was an Iowa, they’ve adopted it in Tennessee as well. So I mean, just meeting, just having those connections in the state organizations has really allowed us to, to expand out of the state of Wisconsin and try to do good work, not only in the Midwest, but hopefully, the plan is to expand it further as years to come. 

Tim Ulbrich  18:55

For those that are listening, if you have a connection with a state association, executive, college of pharmacy that you think might be interested, reach out to John directly, we’ll provide some contact information in the show notes reach out to us, we’ll help make a connection there as well. John, help our listeners understand the model. If I if I understand it correctly, you are facilitating donations, food drives, other types of efforts that then tie into other efforts and organizations that are already established as boots on the ground to provide food in addressing some of the food insecurity is that is that correct? 

Dr. John Muchka  19:30

that’s absolutely correct. So I don’t know if the term umbrella organization is the right term but so we utilize the Pharm to Tables name and try to leverage that with the with the pharmacy profession. But we vet meal programs and food pantries, so we raise money and and non perishables and allocate them to food pantries in our area. But for the model outside of the state, they’re using the name recognition of Pharm to Tables and I help make connections with those local food pantries and meal  programs. But there’s usually a site champion that that will handle the actual day to day or week food drive that they have and be in connection with those meal programs. So we do have the availability to donate online. Most of those online donations go directly to the Wisconsin organization. So the outside out of state meal programs, they usually have a site champion that they’ll donate actual money to. And then they allocate that money to the meal program. So it doesn’t go through the Pharm to Tables website for out of state solicitations based on different solicitation laws for others.

Tim Ulbrich  20:44

One of those lessons that your attorney roommate helped you navigate, right?

Dr. John Muchka  20:49

That’s exactly right. I didn’t realize how, how different some of those solicitation laws are from state to state. So to keep everything clean, if it is in another state, we usually allocate a state champion to raise the money and then that money will go directly to whatever meal program or food pantry they desire.

Tim Ulbrich  21:08

What I really liked about the model, what you’ve built, John, is it layers on you use the term umbrella organization whether or not you know that that’s necessarily a correct term, I’m following what you mean by that which it layers on the existing infrastructure, and organizations that already exist in alignment with the purpose that you have, but elevates the awareness of the need to other individuals that perhaps you’re looking for an opportunity to give that may not necessarily already be plugged in with that organization, rather than replicating the work of other organizations. It’s really helping elevate and support the work that’s already been done, which is great. I think that’s, that’s an awesome model for folks to think about. So if I’m following John correctly, essentially, there’s, when it comes to how your organization supports efforts, there’s monetary donations that folks can make directly, as well as donations of goods. And that often happens through some of the drives and other things that you’re doing. Is that correct? 

Dr. John Muchka  22:01

That is absolutely correct. Yep. So I know, in the state here we have we have fundraising events. In Wisconsin, we have two major fundraising events that we raised the bulk of the monetary donations through. But most of the offset or the out of state, run things are mostly food donations. There is the monetary donations that that again, go to that site champion, but we want to make sure that all the donations stay local for more they can. It’s 100%, volunteer organization, so any of the money that comes in is going to go back out. It’s a it’s a passion project and not making any profit. Sure. But it’s something that fills my tank and and keeps me going and when once see the impact, or when you give that check to the food pantry, or you drop off a trailer full of food to a food pantry, just just seeing the results of that. And when they say this is going to make such a difference, and they actually mean it. That’s what keeps me going and wants you to do more. I mean, I know when you’re a kid, everyone says you know, it’s better to give than to receive. And that’s absolutely true. I mean, makes you feel good. It fills the tank, it gives you more purpose of what you’re doing here. So it’s something that it’s been a lot of work to get going. But it’s been worth every hour that I put into it, just seeing the impact that has had on my community and seeing it grow and people buying in on the regional has been amazing.

Tim Ulbrich  23:37

Well, we’ve got 140 plus colleges of pharmacy now out there. So no excuse we should have all 140 plus colleges that are involved, I’d love to see a national right kind of food food competition supporting what you’re doing with Pharm to Tables. As you look back on getting the nonprofit off the ground and all of the work that you did to go from idea to executing on that idea to obviously the growth and to getting the buy in and to now actually raising raising funds and having the impact that you’re having. Are there one or two things that stand out to you as lessons learned along the way, you know, as you as you implemented the work and the efforts that you’re doing at Pharm to Tables,

Dr. John Muchka  24:16

I think I think the biggest is people are innately good and want to help. We just need to find the ones that are like minded and want to do it. A lot of people want to give but like you had mentioned before, maybe they don’t know what platform they want to do that on, but giving them an opportunity to give and get that get that feeling that that you get when you give. That was the probably the biggest lesson is people want to help. They just want they need to find a reason or how to do it a way to do it. Another thing that I learned was it’s not easy. Nothing’s easy, right? I mean, there’s going to be barriers along the way and it would have been easy just to hang it up and say yeah, I had this idea but nothing really came of it. But to have the vision and the foresight to say this could be something that could make a big difference in a lot of people’s lives. And just to keep going, I mean, no doesn’t mean No, it means not right now. And I live by that. I mean, a lot of people say no, and I take that as Okay, that’s a no, no, but not stop doing.

Tim Ulbrich  25:24

Yeah. Love the resilience of that. I think it’s it’s certainly good advice, as you think out into the future, John, let’s say 5, 10 years, and you know, that next evolution that next phase of the Pharm to Tables, what what does success look like? What does growth look like for the organization?

Dr. John Muchka  25:43

I think that success and growth are going to be hand in hand here. And our goal as the board is to add an additional state every year. Whether it’s one school of pharmacy, or one health system that wants to do something. So leveraging all of our combined networks to find the people that want to give and want to help and are in the position, maybe to pitch it to their board or pitch it to their school of pharmacy. That’s the plan. It’s, it’s, it’s growing a little faster than I had anticipated, which is there’s some logistical things that that we need to to button up. But I mean, it’s great just seeing how this thing is taken off. So just giving people that opportunity in that platform to make a difference and to give in, as pharmacists, I mean, that’s why we signed up for this thing to help people. And that can look a lot of different ways. It can be at the bedside, it could be in the community when you’re consulting or giving medical advice to someone. But this is just another avenue for us to to help our communities to improve community health. And I think that’s success right there. I mean, any little bit we can do to maybe make it a little easier on somebody in our community where then they might be able to afford their prescription instead of making a decision between feeding their families or, or buying their their chronic medication. I mean, that could make a world of difference, not only for their families, but for their individual health.

Tim Ulbrich  27:17

Yeah, and I think one thing that struck me, John, is you’re just talking, as you know, we know that there’s a lot of burnout that’s happening in among healthcare professionals among pharmacists. And, you know, I think, going back to some of the roots of hey, why don’t we get started in the profession of pharmacy. And I think being involved in philanthropic efforts being involved in giving activities, whether that’s monetarily, whether that’s your time, whether that’s both, I think that can be an important antidote to some of the burnout and other things that folks may be experiencing. And again, going back to the days when we were all in pharmacy school, even if that was 15, 20 years ago of hey, what why was I so excited and passionate about this project, this effort? You know, this initiative? John, as we wrap up here, what is the best way that our listeners can learn more about the work that you’re doing, to stay up to date with the work that you’re doing, potentially get involved, whether that be financially or make a connection, what what would be the best way for our listeners to do that?

Dr. John Muchka  28:11

The best way would probably be to visit our website to see what we’re doing. Or you can contact me directly and Tim, I can give you my contact information for people to contact but talk to your, your fellow pharmacists, talk to your families, talk to your community and see, hey, is this something that we want to do. It’s not a ton of work to put on a food drive or or do a fundraising activity to help your communities and I can definitely help guide them through those steps on how to do it. Because it was trial and error for me when I first started and I definitely learned some key things along the way on what makes them maybe more successful and gets buy in from from the people that they’re looking for. So start with the website, contact me individually, I would love to have a conversation about ways that we can help our community and hopefully help end food insecurity in the community that I’m in and the community that all the listeners are in.

Tim Ulbrich  29:09

So again, we’ll link to the website pharmtotables.org in the shownotes will also link to John, share your contact information. Thanks for giving that information out. I love what you have built love what you’re working on. When you shared with me a couple months ago, how you got started, the story behind getting started, how you took that step from idea to ultimately getting off the ground and now to see the growth  of that, have a lot of respect and admiration for what you’re doing there. So thank you so much for coming on the show to take time to share your journey. 

Dr. John Muchka  29:37

It was a pleasure. Anytime, Tim.

Tim Ulbrich  29:39

Thank you. 

Tim Ulbrich  29:42

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

Tim Ulbrich  30:25

DISCLAIMER: As we conclude this week’s podcast, an important reminder that the content on this show is provided to you for informational purposes only and is not intended to provide and should not be relied on for investment or any other advice. Information in the podcast and corresponding materials should not be construed as a solicitation or offer to buy or sell any investment or related financial products. We urge listeners to consult with a financial advisor with respect to any investment. Furthermore, the information contained in our archive newsletters, blog posts and podcasts is not updated and may not be accurate at the time you listen to it on the podcast. Opinions and analyses expressed herein are solely those of Your Financial Pharmacist unless otherwise noted and constitute judgments as of the dates published. Such information may contain forward looking statements, which are not intended to be guarantees of future events. Actual results could differ materially from those anticipated in the forward looking statements. For more information, please visit yourfinancialpharmacist.com/disclaimer. Thank you again for your support of the Your Financial Pharmacist podcast. Have a great rest of your week.

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YFP 363: A Conversation with My Dad: Lessons on Entrepreneurs, Fatherhood, & Finance


YFP CEO Tim Ulbrich talks with his dad, Tom Ulbrich, on entrepreneurship, fatherhood, and finances.

Episode Summary

In celebration of Father’s Day, Tim Ulbrich talks with his own dad, Tom Ulbrich, to have a conversation on entrepreneurship, fatherhood, and finances. 

During this wisdom-packed dialogue, Tom shares his career journey starting with running a family business, to developing an e-commerce business out of the basement of his home, to achieving his MBA in his 40’s, to his time in academia, and to now leading a large nonprofit in Western New York. Tom shares his thoughts on his two sons going from traditional to non-traditional career paths, how he and his wife, Lynn, have defined what it means to be living their rich life, and his take on redefining retirement and why it shouldn’t be a one-size fits all approach.

This special conversation highlights the generational throughline in the Ulbrich family of entrepreneurship and how career and life choices are about the journey, not the destination.

About Today’s Guest

As a passionate advocate for small business and a former business owner himself, Tom Ulbrich intimately understands the power that entrepreneurship has to unlock human potential, create jobs, inspire wealth, and invigorate economies and communities across the globe.Tom is an entrepreneurial leader with broad-based management experience in both the for-profit and non-profit sectors. His passion for social innovation is focused on nurturing strong relationships and building consensus across diverse groups of stakeholders in the academic, for-profit, non-profit and government sectors.

During his prior tenure as an assistant dean at the University at Buffalo’s School of Management and School of Social Work he did extensive work in the field of social entrepreneurship with a focus on the emerging concept of the “entrepreneurial non-profit”. He retains an appointment at the UB School of Management as Executive in Residence for Entrepreneurship. He is a speaker and writer with a weekly newsletter titled Soar, Don’t Settle where he shares his thoughts about business, leadership and life. He is also a member of the Forbes Non-Profit Council and contributes content that you can find on Forbes.com. In May 2020, he became President and CEO of Goodwill of Western New York  where he is working with a dedicated team to apply an interdisciplinary approach to social innovation in a real world setting.

Key Points from the Episode

  • Career journey from family business to nonprofit leadership. [0:00]
  • Entrepreneurship, identity, and risk-taking in various professions. [7:54]
  • Importance of financial literacy and creative problem-solving in education. [15:06]
  • Entrepreneurship, risk mitigation, and leadership. [19:05]
  • Entrepreneurship, leadership, and strategy. [27:25]
  • Personal growth and career development through education and experience. [35:28]
  • Starting and selling an e-commerce business within a family-owned landscaping business. [38:42]
  • Career pivot from family business to entrepreneurship, with reflection on past experiences and their impact on current success. [43:50]
  • Parenting and entrepreneurship, balancing safety and individuality. [47:11]
  • Finding balance between saving for future and living a rich life today. [52:07]
  • Financial planning, relationships, and experiences. [59:20]
  • Individualized retirement planning and prioritizing personal goals. [1:02:18]
  • Financial planning, retirement, and career fulfillment. [1:07:49]

Episode Highlights

“I feel like everything I’ve done prior to this, all the pieces of that journey, have led me to sort of my dream job where everything is coming together. Entrepreneurship, leadership, all the things that I love to do, are sitting here in this job.” – Tom Ulbrich, [5:29]

“So to your point with with young pharmacists that are on a career path, I think the challenge for many people, especially when they have invested in education, a lot of money, a lot of time and have deep expertise in a field, you can get trapped and stuck, because it’s uncomfortable leaving something that’s comfortable. But by never leaving, what makes you feel comfortable is really that can potentially really rob you of having the thrill of being able to do something that you can make a good living at, and still be passionate about at the same time.” – Tom Ulbrich [5:48]

“There is you have to think about skills, not think about titles, not think about licenses. But think about the diverse set of skills that you’ve learned and that you’re that you that you’re a unique individual that’s put together all these little pieces along the way that makes you special, and whatever that next step is that you’re after.” – Tom Ulbrich [7:35]

“I don’t think we give our kids either in school or sometimes as parents enough teaching or learning around creativity because the truth is the world we live in today, a degree is a piece of paper. That’s great. And I know it’s required for many professions. But what you really need to do to be successful today is you need to know how to identify what the true problem is when you see a problem.” – Tom Ulbrich [14:25]

“The fact is, entrepreneurs are really great risk mitigators, they don’t gamble. What they do is they try to identify what the risks are, mitigate what they can, and then understand what true risks they’re taking.” – Tom Ulbrich [20:45]

Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode

Episode Transcript

Tim Ulbrich  00:00

Hey everybody, Tim Ulbrich here and thank you for listening to the YFP Podcast where each week we strive to inspire and encourage you on your path towards achieving financial freedom. In celebration of Father’s Day this weekend, I brought my dad Tom Ulbrich, onto the show to have a conversation on entrepreneurship, fatherhood, and finance. During this episode, my dad shares his career paths starting with running a family business to start another business in our basement, and then leading a large nonprofit in Western New York. His thoughts on my brother and I going from traditional to non traditional career paths, how he and my mom had to find what it means to be living their rich life, and his take on redefining retirement, and why it shouldn’t be a one size fits all approach. This is a good one, my favorite episode thus far in the 363 episodes, and nearly seven years that we’ve been recording the show. Happy Father’s Day to all the dads out there listening. I’m rooting for you. 

Tim Ulbrich  00:55

Dad, welcome to the show.

Tom Ulbrich  00:57

Excited to be here. Thank you for having me. I’ve been looking forward to this.

Tim Ulbrich  01:01

Well, it’s a joy to say those words, something I haven’t been able to say on the first 362 episodes of the podcast. I’m looking forward to the conversation. I think we could spend hours talking about a variety of topics around fatherhood, entrepreneurship financing. So we’ll see where the conversation goes, I do want to start with your career journey. And the reason why I want to start there is that, as I was talking with you about the other day, I see a lot of pharmacists that are stuck. Stuck defined by the sunk cost of time and money that they invested into getting their pharmacy degree and perhaps they’re interested in something else that might be within the profession that might be outside of the profession, but they’re unable to see paths, the straight line path that they embarked upon, many at a young age. So with that backdrop, give us an overview of your career journey, that I think highlights so well how it’s really much more of a journey and not not a destination. 

Tom Ulbrich  01:58

Sure. I’m happy to do that and cut me off if this gets a little bit long. It’s a long journey, right, at my age, but, excuse me, the so my path started with I had one goal in life when I was graduated from high school – that was to get married to your mom as quickly as possible. So the pathway for me to do that I didn’t didn’t have any particularly great interests in one thing or another, was overall, a decent student. But the family we had a garden center in the family, landscaping business. So I’m like, let’s go into the family business. So I can get done with school. I went to school for ornamental horticulture and landscape design, entered the family business, got married right away, and Michael came along almost immediately, then you. And for over 20 years, I stayed in the family business, not because I was necessarily passionate about it. But because it was that that sort of like straight line you were talking about where you’re, you feel I don’t want to say I ever felt trapped. That’s not the fair, fair word. But I felt responsible, like it was my job to provide for the family. So once you both were in college, I decided to pursue some of my dreams, which meant I went back to get my MBA, I decided to leave the family business and actually ran for public office unsuccessfully. And the reason for running was I was very involved supporting small businesses through the National Federation of Independent Business and thought, why not do this on public policy side. But when I ran under those auspices, what happened was I had an opportunity then given to me at the University of Buffalo to run their Center for Entrepreneurial Leadership. So went Hey, you want to do all this stuff. You don’t need to be elected official, come here and do that. And I’ll kind of speed that all up, but I was there for 12 years. I became the Executive Director of the Center for Entrepreneurial Leadership and became an Assistant Dean and faculty member in the School of Management where I taught entrepreneurship. And then towards the end of my time at University of Buffalo, which ended in 2020, I had a dual appointment as Assistant Dean to the School of Management was well of the school as well as the School of Social Work. Where I working on a real passion project and that was social innovation or the the intersection of for profit, business and social sector or nonprofit business. In 2020, I was recruited by a recruiter to Goodwill. Have to be honest for probably six or eight phone calls, I said thanks for calling. I’m not interested in running a bunch of retail stores. I finally did meet with the board; was really intrigued with the business model here at Goodwill that we are a social enterprise and that we can you know we can raise money or profit through our retail stores and reinvest that into our workforce development. So the challenge to me as an as an entrepreneur, and I didn’t mention along the way, we’ve started a couple businesses and stuff, I’ve skipped that part. But having been an entrepreneur, the challenge was I’ll come out of academia and do this in the real world. And I kind of took the bait, and here I am at Goodwill. I’ve been here for four years, and absolutely love the work here, and feel like everything I’ve done prior to this, you talk about journey, all the pieces of that journey, have led me to sort of my dream job where everything is coming together. entrepreneurship, leadership, all the things that I love to do, are sitting here in this job. So to your point with with young pharmacists that are on a career path, I think the challenge for many people, especially when they have invested in education, a lot of money, a lot of time and have deep expertise in a field, you can get trapped and stuck, because it’s uncomfortable leaving something that’s comfortable, but by never leaving, what makes you feel comfortable is really that can potentially really rob you, I guess it’s the right word, I was looking for the right word, rob, you have the thrill of being able to do something that you can make a good living at, and still be passionate about at the same time. And I think what people have to think about is not the degree, not the technical skills that I have, but under the auspices of a pharmacy license, but to think about what skills do I have that transfer to many other things. You’re, you know, you’re a perfect example, and many of your friends are that you’ve taken those skills that come with what you’ve learned as a pharmacist and gained all this experience along the way, then you’re able to pivot into something that uses those skills. I think we were talking about the other day, you see this a lot and people that come out of the military, incredibly skilled and valuable people for any organization. But it’s really hard sometimes to transfer those jobs, like what you did in the military, and how do they transfer out into, you know, the business sector here back home, or? And I think what happens there is you have to think about skills, not think about titles, not think about licenses. But think about the diverse set of skills that you’ve learned and that you’re that you that you’re a unique individual that’s put together all these little pieces along the way that makes you special, and whatever that next step is that you’re after.

Tim Ulbrich  07:54

Yeah. And I think that goes back to this idea of identity not being attached to the degree or the title. And I think for our profession, we struggle with that, right? Because at 18, 19, 20, 21 years old you know, there’s a story of, hey, you’re going to be a doctor, you’re going to have a pharmacy degree, you’re going to do X, Y, or Z and a feels big, it feels weighty that you have to make these decisions. And I think there’s actually a lightness and a relief as scary as it may sound to the listeners of kind of stepping into this uncomfortable territory and detaching yourself from the identity of the degree or the identity of you know, I’m a hospital pharmacist or I’m an industry pharmacist. It’s it’s about these transferable skills that we’re talking about. And I think honestly, one of the many things you taught me, maybe it was said, maybe it was unsaid, it was role modeled, like I lived that firsthand. I saw you go through this journey. I was in high school, finishing high school, going into college, when you made this transition and entered into the MBA ran for political office took the next step. I remember the phone call when I was in the airport traveling when you’re interviewing with Goodwill, right? Like we’ve lived these things firsthand. And my brother, Mike, he’s a great example of this. You know, he’s an industrial engineer by training. He went in, worked in corporate finance was very successful. And then he got 10ish years in and realized like, hey, I want something different for my life, for my family. And the pivot moment from for him was when he was able, with the help of a coach and some others, to detach himself from the identity with the degree or the identity with the role that he had spent his first decade of his career in. And that’s uncomfortable, but I want to talk about that uncomfortable in this because human beings are wired for safety. Right? That’s that’s normal and everything else is a risk. And for pharmacists, that’s real. Doctorate degree, good paycheck, lots of debt to pay off. Any other path than the quote, “norm” is risk and that’s hard hurting our profession. Because what’s this? What’s the incentive for taking risks and taking innovation? So as you’ve taught many entrepreneurs, and you’ve lived this journey yourself, what would you have to share to those folks that are, hey, I’m wired for safety, I see that and this idea of stepping outside of that is uncomfortable.

Tom Ulbrich  10:18

So that that’s great background, and really a really good question. And remind me I want to get back to we’re, you know, Father’s Day, and I want to talk a little bit about how parents are part of that journey with us shaping us to, we’ll come back around to that, but back to, you know, I’m gonna go back to the classroom for a minute. So one of the interesting things they taught entrepreneurship, and anybody on here should be saying, how do you teach entrepreneurship? Well, the fact is, you you don’t. Really to become an entrepreneur, you need to live in what we teach people are, here’s some best practices, how to validate a business, how to do customer discovery. But what you’re really referring to is something that you that I picked up, I only remember where I picked it up from a long time ago, is in entrepreneurship is the concept of 50,000 chunks of experience. So meaning that you will not be successful until you gain that experience. And you gain that everywhere. From you talked about a pharmacy degree. But you gain it also from role modeling. So both of both of my sons, now we’re entrepreneurs, not I was an entrepreneur, my dad was, in a sense, an entrepreneur. So we learn these skills by role modeling and seeing it. One of the interesting things when you look at data around entrepreneurship, and most of the data I’m familiar with is around minority entrepreneurship and women owned businesses. Until the last maybe 10 years, the the those demographics struggled mightily with being able to be successful entrepreneurs. And the question is, why? What the research showed was the why is, where’s the role model? Whereas somebody that looks like me, that has done this before? So long winded answer to say, yes, we as human beings are risk averse, we are wired that way. And the further down a path you get in a good career, like being a pharmacist, the that risk aversion just tightens and it’s even harder to walk away. And many entrepreneurs, you don’t need to be successful, like Mark Zuckerberg is an outlier, the 21 year old that created something and blew it up. Most entrepreneurs are successful later in life after they gained their experience, and they are in a stuck track. But what often happens is we have a financial downturn, something happens and maybe they lose their their job. And they’re sort of forced into entrepreneurship and recognizing can do that. Yeah, if I can, can I back up to parenting for a minute? Because I think it’s important and and no and answer your question. Will not question but your your comment about, did I role model for you? No, not deliberately at all. In fact, not at all, but it may have happened. So I think one of the challenges too, as parents, we want what we think is best for our children, I think everybody does. And sometimes we maybe think about it through the lens of safety for kids. And we don’t, we’re afraid and we almost drive people to a profession. Remember, when you’re thinking about college, you didn’t really know what you’re wanted to do. And I think we’re like, oh, this is probably you’re really good in these things. 

Tim Ulbrich  13:39

Yep. 

Tom Ulbrich  13:39

But it doesn’t mean that something you were passionate about or wanting to do. So I think from a parenting standpoint, and I wish I would have known these things, you know, 40 years ago, but I we did the best we could with what we knew, right? Probably would have done things differently to just try to understand now that I know how successful you can be as an entrepreneur, focus a lot more with understanding the unique individual that each child is and spending a lot more time in creative play, teaching about innovation, and not so much in the structure of I don’t want to say school because I don’t want to say schools are bad. It’s not. I don’t think we give give our kids either in school or sometimes as parents enough teaching or learning around creativity because the truth is the world we live in today, a degree a piece of paper. That’s great. And I know it’s required for many professions. But what you really need to do to be successful today is you know, how you need to know how to identify what the true problem is, when you see a problem. How do I look for the root cause of that problem and know how to do that and you know how to seek out information, really. Those are and solve problems creatively, which is really creative, creative problem solving.

Tim Ulbrich  15:06

Yeah. And you said the other day when we were talking, you said, hey, if we as a nation, right want to remain great for centuries to come, we talked about two things, you know, personal finance education, our listeners will give an amen to that and then creative problem solving. Right. And it’s interesting, I was just read an article the other day, you know, you think about all the focus around STEM over the last 10-15 years, and I’m not saying STEM is bad in any way, shape, or form. But even look at an area of study like computer science, and I was reading article about computer science graduates coming out having difficulty, you know, finding jobs because of AI and some of the replacement and technology thing that’s going on in coding, etc. And, you know, we have this huge surge of focus in that area, you have an overabundance, right, in some regards to people that are going into those fields, and now we have disruption that’s happening right now. But when you look at something like creative problem solving, so I’m very hard to teach in a structured environment, very important skill, that translates that is not easily replaceable, as we think about where trends are going. 

Tom Ulbrich  16:02

Sure. And when what you just said is really critically important. Imagine if we taught these two things, from the time your kindergarten or even before – financial literacy, and creative problem solving. Yeah, if that was baked in to the basic sort of like a core curriculum that that was part of the core curriculum, those things it would really change so much for the better. Because, you know, in the work that you do, how many people don’t understand financial literacy, and we can’t blame the individuals, you know, yes, you’re responsible to learn that, but they’ve never learned it. And they also back to role modeling, we talked about with entrepreneurship, you also role model people with money, too, right. And so you have, you have poor role models, quite frankly, and aren’t sure themselves, because they never learned how to handle their finances. So I think those two things could really, really start to teach things. And what’s fascinating to me, we talked a little bit the other day about the Medici effect, which is, which is really important, which, if anybody’s interested in that maybe could put it in the footnotes of Franz Johansson has wrote the book and had some really great simple TED Talks and learn about it. But it’s really around the concept that creativity, and innovation are enhanced by diversity, which is really interesting to me, because we’re so focused on diversity, which it’s important. But it’s all those diverse experiences, which ties back to our beginning discussion, and its diversity and everything. It’s in diversity in the people we work with. And that diversity isn’t just ethnic diversity, its age diversity, education diversity, likes diversity. It’s all that diversity. When you take people that are diverse, and you put them together, the sharing, and the creative, problem solving that can happen is just really, really amazing. So again, to teach that, and to stop, you know, that whole concept sort of busts up our limited thinking, and that’s what holds us back is, is we’re, we’re just back to risk aversion. We’re wired to be risk averse, okay, I’m making $110 grand as a pharmacist, or whatever pharmacists make, and why do I want to give that up? Like, maybe you want to give that up to pursue something that you’re really, really passionate about, that you’re going to thrive in, and maybe you’re going to make way more money, doing something that you’re passionate about. And again, I don’t believe in the old saying, do what you love, and you’re going to be fine. I think you have to balance that you can’t just ignore, you have to look at your skills. But what also is nice about having a career like a pharmacist, you can you have the safety of your career, while you build something. So if you’re really want to do it, and you’re willing to put in that extra work in the evenings in the weekends, you can build it while you have the safety of your of your career at the same time.

Tim Ulbrich  19:05

Can we talk about that for a minute? Because I think we tend to generally speaking about pharmacists, especially because of the things we’ve been talking about with, you know, some of the fixed mindset around the degree and the ceiling of income and the debt we have to pay off. You know, we tend to miscalculate risk, meaning we blow it out of proportion. And I found myself doing this early in my own journey. And one of things I often say is that at the end of the day, your pharmacy license is the greatest emergency fund you’re ever gonna have. 

Tom Ulbrich  19:32

That’s true. 

Tim Ulbrich  19:33

So if you take a risk, and worst case scenario happens and it doesn’t work out, to be able to have something you can fall back on that you can make $55 to $65 an hour. I’m not saying you want to go do the work that’s available necessarily or want to do it forever. But that is an incredible asset to lean on. And it really changes your perception of worst case scenario and taking risk and I’m curious from your perspective of your own business journey and mentoring many other business owners, how do you help people really evaluate risk objectively, when it becomes so emotional often that we look at it, and perhaps it looks scarier than it really is.

Tom Ulbrich  20:14

I think that’s an excellent point. So so as we keep saying, people are naturally risk averse, most of us. Here’s the other fascinating, you know, studies around entrepreneurship. Many people and I think people that are maybe in your industry that are considering doing something different or building something, they look at entrepreneurs and assume that they are these insane risk takers and throw it all down, you know, I guess it’d be the equivalent of going to a casino and putting all your money on black or red, whatever it is. The fact is, entrepreneurs are really great risk. mitigators is what they are, they don’t gamble. What they do, they try to get the risk, they try to do whatever they can to identify what the risks are, mitigate what they can, and then understand what true risks they’re taking. And, and I know myself and probably most successful entrepreneurs, they’re not they’re not taking 80% chance of having a loss, they’re looking to make sure that they’re way better than a 50/50. If I go into this, and how do they do that, the way you do that is lots of research, lots of Proforma work, like trying to understand how I’m going to make this work. But the most important thing is if you have a new idea – customer discovery. Speaking to potential customers early and often, talking about what you’re going to try to sell or what you’re going to present to somebody. And if the market is there, you’ll be able to see that the market is there, because all too often, many of us have a passion about something and go run off and build a business without ever asking is somebody going to buy my product, right. I’ve done that a couple of times, and you start to customer discovery, realize you’re the only person that’s interested in this. So it’s really important to not be the gambler, is what it boils down to. And to do that work that you can do. And think about mitigating risks before you take that next step for it.

Tim Ulbrich  22:17

That’s so good. I often say that the best businesses are when you can combine something you’re passionate about plus a problem that needs to be solved plus is something that people are willing to pay for. And sometimes you can have one of those or two of those but not three of those, right you can have as you mentioned, you can have a passion, but people may not want what you’re selling, or it’s not necessarily solving a problem that is as big as maybe you think it is. Or you could be solving a problem that you know isn’t big enough that people are willing to pay for it. And so you’ve got to really do all of those things. And hopefully there is passion behind it. Because as you know, firsthand business is going to have ups and downs. It’s inevitable. It’s gonna have highs, it’s gonna have lows. And I believe that when the lows are there, like you better have a really strong passion that’s kind of grounding you right to keep you anchored in those seasons where things aren’t going so well.

Tom Ulbrich  23:06

No dead on. And I think our society too, we have to be really careful about that word, passion, meaning I’d like to talk, you know, flip that a little bit and say, purpose. Your purpose driven type of work. In our world today, I think we mix up sometimes passion and purpose. And I just wrote a blog post recently where I described a little bit – somebody had found that was very purpose driven in their work and what they did. And I’d said in the blog posts, I have a passion for music, I love music. And I, you know, I have four guitars, they can’t play any of them. Right? So am I really, really is is that a true passion? Or is it a like. So I think I think that’d be my first sort of tip to people make sure it’s not just something you’re interested in that you like, it really, truly is a passion. And again, in today’s world, I think we’re always told well, I’m passionate about this. I’m passionate about that. But making sure it’s a passion. And if it’s a true passion, you will never feel like you’re working because the drive that that purpose, that purpose driven drive, it just feeds you it gives you energy it gives you it builds you up even if you’re working full time you’ve got the juice to do something at night because you’re building something that you are truly passionate or purpose driven about.

Tim Ulbrich  24:30

I want to go back to your career journey. You know, it strikes me as you’re talking and you know, I kind of look at mine as the same and I don’t think that’s by accident. We talked about role modeling, and being comfortable with you know, kind of a staggered approach. It really feels more like a rock wall that you’ve climbed and you have climbed a ladder, meaning there has been exciting progressions but you’ve acquired the skills you’ve gone sideways, you’ve gone into different industries. You know, you started really what I would call if we over simplify your first half of your career. We are, you know, in a family business, starting your own business, then you had this time where you went back and got some additional training that led to other opportunities. You then were mentoring other business owners and coaching through the university. And now you’re in this stage where you’re you’re leading a large nonprofit organization. And so as you look at that journey, in hindsight, are there threads that you see that go across all of those, even though those roles are very different? You know, you’ve talked about entrepreneurship and problem solving, if you get a little bit more granular, are there things within those experiences where like, yeah, I see the obvious connections? 

Tom Ulbrich  25:35

Sure. I think one is leadership. I like to lead and I learned actually talking about role modeling early in life that I had some of those pieces that would make me a decent leader. And that was in high school, a coach actually making me Captain the team when I was nowhere near the best athlete. My brain said, always said, well, the captains are the the superstars, right. But somebody identifying early, seeing something where you can connect people you can, you can figure things out, and how people can work together. So I think leadership is one of them. The other is, I really enjoy fixing things and building things and building teams up. And I can see that connection throughout the way and very think the other thing, we also didn’t talk about what your mom and I started an e-commerce company that we sold a few years ago, that started as a catalog business, really out of necessity and seeing opportunity. So I think also, just the other thread is just opportunity seeking. So imagine in a stable family business, the stress that can put on things. Because in a family business, a lot of it is about stability, and everything’s okay. And then it’s not true, always I get that. But you have somebody that’s always kind of like trying to push the limits and looking for something new. And I don’t want to say never satisfied, but it might feel to other people, like you’re never never satisfied. But what’s the thread? I think a lot of it is building things, a lot of it is leadership. And a lot of it is seeing problems and wanting to solve them, thinking there’s a better way to do something.

Tim Ulbrich  27:25

You said never satisfied. And I know you hedge that and caught yourself there, which I agree with. But I want to go there for a minute, because I think one of the things that you and I share is very much an achievement mindset that I often say through my own work of counseling, other things, I’ve learned that it can be my greatest asset and my greatest crippler, meaning that like it’s an innate gift, that I can solve problems, I can see opportunities. I can, you know, build a vision, execute on the vision, get people excited about the vision, get things going, I like to build and create I’m not a sustainer, necessarily as well. But if I’m not careful, like that can get out of balance. And it can be the next thing. The next thing, the next thing without seeing kind of the bigger picture of like, what’s the purpose? What are we doing here? It’s not just about achieving one thing after another. So share with me your journey and that kind of never satisfied achievement and how you reconcile that I know you’ve done work on that yourself. And you’ve come to appreciate like, Hey, that’s a good gift and a skill, but it also comes with challenges.

Tom Ulbrich  28:29

It’s a great gift and a skill. And it comes with lots of challenges, right? So yes, we do share that. And I think that it’s probably not uncommon with achievers, I guess it’s what I would call it. It’s almost like overachieving. So I I didn’t really address this until later. But I I still work with the same coach and the coach I work with he really like nailed it for me one day and said, You know what, Tom, you’re really good at climbing small mountains, grabbing the flag as fast as you can, getting the top and then looking around for the next mountain, the next peak. But he’s like, why don’t you get on a big mountain where you can change the world. And it’s gonna take you years and years and think about their journey as a climb and a plateau a climb and a plateau and climb and a plateau, which is really, really helped me also to, you know, I, I went through thankfully, it’s no big problem, but went through some medical stuff, the last few months, which made me really really reevaluate like what’s important to me, and what am I want to do, what don’t I want to do? And unfortunately, most people don’t have those events until they’re in their 50s, 60s. It’s something we should maybe think about a little bit earlier, but let me go back to your thing about achieving so I think number one is if if it’s purpose driven, make that mountain bigger. So you’re gonna we’re wired to climb. I bet you most of pharmacists listening on here, didn’t get through pharmacy school without being a type A, at least some level achiever. If you’re going to be an entrepreneur, what I want people to do is to understand what type entrepreneur you and me are, we’re founders. We are founders were the, you know, we’re the people that are good at seeing a problem, seeing if there’s a market for it, identifying the resource, it’s going to take pulling together the finances, finding the team. And that is a skill set that’s super important to a startup. What we’re best to do, though, is to build a team and go on to the next business or the next idea, and not trying to manage the team, because our type of personalities get bored with management. And, and yeah, we could argue like, well, you need to fix yourself, no, we don’t need to fix ourselves. We need to lean in, lean into who we are, surround yourself with people. And my team, if they were listening here at Goodwill would start laughing right now. Because they know I’m going to be popcorning ideas all day long. And I have surrounded myself with with people that are good at operational excellence, I’m not. I’m good at identifying the opportunity of solving problems, ideas, but actually, you know, we as a company gets larger, putting that day to day operational management, and you have to surround yourself with people. Comes back to our conversation about diversity. Diversity, makes it all better. So you have a diverse group of, you know, managers on your team too, that bring different skill sets to the table, you never want to surround yourself with people just like you. 

Tim Ulbrich  31:44

That’s right.

Tom Ulbrich  31:45

Because you will be, what you’ll be doing is seeing opportunities, not properly implementing the structure to run the business, and you’re gonna be starting and failing, starting and failing starting and failing.

Tim Ulbrich  31:56

You know, it’s interesting, as you’re talking, I was just reflecting back on, you know, some of the experiences I’ve had within organizations where I’ve built and created things. And where I’ve gotten in trouble is when I built and created and then I haven’t had the resources to help sustain, maintain, or be comfortable and willing to let go, for whatever reason, and then all of a sudden, you end up in this phase where you’re trying to implement and continue to implement and sustain when you really are a builder. And that’s not good for you as the individual. It’s not good for the organization either, right? Because I would argue Goodwill is best when you are building and popcorning ideas. So how do we surround you, with people, as you have, that can help you implement. And good leaders, good managers will see that with their people, and really help identify and say, Oh, hey, Tom’s a builder, he’s an innovator. He’s not a sustainer. And that’s okay. Like, we need him building. We need him out there innovating for the organization. 

Tom Ulbrich  32:53

I think the way you attract people is the one thing you must have as a leader. In our organization, especially as you get into larger organizations, the difference between a small business and a larger business is really the complexity of what you’re doing. So I always think of management from sort of the team of team concept. We have all these little mini teams that come together as a big entity, right? Like a matrix, and it’s in a, in a larger business, you have that complexity, and how do you track talent, you attract talent, through leadership, but what the important part is creating a vision with a clear pathway for it says we’re strategy, strategic planning, and communicating that in an interesting way, not a book that’s it’s up on a shelf someplace that nobody’s going to read. But how do you tell the story? What’s the story about where we’re going as a company, and if you think of your role as a CEO, or leader, I always think of it as your the chief energy officer, the chief inspiration officer, you’re not the Chief Executive Officer, although that’s the title, right? Your job is to really rally the troops, create the vision. And I always say, carry that flag in front of everybody. And remember, just when you are sick and tired of hearing yourself, talk about where we’re going, people are only beginning to listen. And it’s really important that we stay persistent as leaders, and also find creative ways to talk about strategy. So what we do here, we actually take our strategic plan, and we put it into different types of journey that we can share with the frontline people. So the first three years of our strategy, we we took our strategy, overlaid it on a map and we created a journey from Buffalo, New York to Hawaii, and where they were able to show people like where are we at on this journey? So really gamifying it a little bit? Yeah, I think that’s a good way but when you have a clear vision, you can attract and retain top talent. You also have to invest in that talent. You can’t be afraid to spend money to bring talent in, right? You need the best of the best. And then how do you keep them, and you keep them through good leadership involving them. One thing you have to watch out as a, as a founder leader is getting out of their way sometimes like, again, if you’re a problem solver, you want to jump in, you can’t solve problems for everybody, you have to ask the questions and help them solve the problem. If you’re going to build a great business.

Tim Ulbrich  35:28

let me ask you a question. I think when probably I’ve never asked you before, but when I think of your journey, it really feels like the point you went to pursue your MBA went back to college. And I remember speaking of role models, I remember at our old house, you guys don’t live there anymore. I remember you at the computer in the living room, you know, going through the application process, doing pre-reqs that ultimately led to the MBA program that led to other opportunities. But that really feels like a transition point where you said, Hey, I’m going to really live my life versus, you know, this being defined for me, and I’m going to really take some autonomy and ownership of the next step, the next phase. And I’m just curious of how you arrived at that decision, right? Because that was an investment of time, it was an investment of money. And to be frank, it has to take some level of humility, because you have how many years of business experience and now I have to go back into a classroom. And I know you went to an executive program where there was more experienced individuals, but you and I both know that a lot of people go into an MBA program with zero experience, right? You had the experience. So what made you say, Hey, this is a skill that I need to acquire, this is a degree that I need to acquire. And that ultimately led you to pulling the trigger and making that decision. 

Tom Ulbrich  36:42

so I felt, excuse me, the, excuse me, the, it actually was a it actually was part of a journey. So multiple times, I started back as early as my mid 20s to go to school. I was gonna go back and become a teacher. I did a lot of coaching, like some significant coaching for a long, long time. And had lots of times that I was if I look backwards, right, it was a journey like gait gaining the courage to step forward. And where the transition point was, it was right when you were in college, because at that time, it felt like we had got our children to a point where they’re going to be okay. And I could now invent and do this. So the MBA was probably it. Why the MBA? The MBA was really more about credentialing, I guess, similar to a pharmacist getting a license. And it might have been a little bit of impostor syndrome, to be honest with you to feeling like, I don’t have something that says I have all this business experience. And in order to be a successful politician, or whatever it was, the next step was going to be I felt like I needed to credential myself at some level. Little did I know that that journey was going to be so much more than credentialing. To be exposed to other people that thought, like I did, felt like I did that were on these journeys. To do whatever they were in, quite frankly, I learned a lot. A lot of people my class were on that find that straight line journey that you talked about. And it was just another step. And I learned, yeah, I don’t think I want to do that I want to do I want to continue to have that freedom of doing my own thing. And what was unique about UB, UB hired me as a clinical professor with the understanding that I had this ecommerce business, and that I would continue to run that ecommerce business. Yeah, because it was a clinical contribution variance. Yeah, experience to what I was doing it, you know, in the classroom.

Tim Ulbrich  38:42

So let’s talk about the e-commerce business. You know, we talked about the family business. So if listeners are curious, it was Ulbrich’s Tree Farm and then Ulbrich’s Tree Farm and Garden Center, that my grandfather started that my dad and his brother took over. Ultimately, you started in ecommerce business called Mow More Landscape Supplies. And let me paint the picture for our listeners. Because this goes back to role modeling experience. I remember, in our old home, I probably was, I don’t know, eight 9, 10, something like that, maybe a little bit younger, a little bit older. I remember I can see the carpet in the basement, I can see in the back of our basement where there were storage area, you had built shelves, that you had white index cards, I see the black Sharpie, that was the inventory for the distribution of the business. I can see the desk where you would do the financials, and eventually that would go into a warehouse and what you created in the business became a much, much bigger business. So why start that business? And how did you come to realize that that one in particular, was an opportunity? Oh, and by the way, I’m going to take this on in addition to another business I have, and I’ve got a young family that I’m raising. 

Tom Ulbrich  39:55

So I think one of it was seeing an opportunity. So we started the business or was related to the garden center business, we had a large landscaping business, we were buying so many parts to repair our mowers and all of our equipment, I decided to go directly to manufacturer to try to save some money. Was successful in negotiating with them to buy some parts and parlay that into selling those parts to other people. So it started, I remember that, you know, if your mom was on here, a lot of this was, thanks to your mom’s hard work. 

Tim Ulbrich  40:26

And I remember that, too. 

Tom Ulbrich  40:28

Yeah. But the first catalog you created, we can’t create a catalog on a typewriter in our basement stapled together, and was really successful for that. So that grew, we ran it out of the house until it got big enough that it was disruptive to the neighbors. And quite frankly, it was a bit unfair to the family business as this is growing. So I sold it to the family business. And we grew it then within the family business. I bought it back years later, and then we exited it back in, in 2019. But that started out of the thrill of building something, seeing the opportunity for it. And the energy came from just building something, like it was fun. It was an opportunity. It was a way to make some extra money. And you know, along the way, as I as my journey increased, really your mom ran that business if I’m being honest. Once I went to University of Buffalo, she managed it, ran it with the team. And until we were able to exit, I had some involvement in it, but not on the day to day. But there’s another example right, the founder, the founders gets excited starts, then walks away and goes and does something else. So that backs up your other other part of our discussion.

Tim Ulbrich  41:47

Well, thankfully, mom’s an implementer. So there’s a good, good and a sustainer. So there’s good, good connection there. Do you think it was fair, as you look back on that. You said that you started this, you had the idea. You felt like hey, there’s some rub here now with the family business. So you sold it to the business to then come and buy it back? Which I’m assuming you buy it back at a premium and then you grow it and eventually sell the business. Like, as you look back, like was that fair? Or? Or was that just some of the dynamics that were there with the with the family business? 

Tom Ulbrich  42:23

No, maybe a little dynamics, but I think in the big picture, it was fair. You know, I think the discussion with my dad was and actually he helped started, he invested in it. 

Tim Ulbrich  42:34

So cool. 

Tom Ulbrich  42:36

He was supportive of it. I borrowed $10,000 from him and paid it back over three years. That’s how we started the business. But I think it grew to the point and in all fairness to him as the leader of the family business, right. I think the rub was or not rub, but the question was, are you know, you’re taking a salary from here, you’re doing that and taking a salary from there? Is this fair to the rest of the family? And I think the answer was, was getting big enough that the reality was it probably wasn’t fair. So the discussion was, you can pack you can either come here and do this. Or you can leave, you know, and it wasn’t done in a negative way. It was just like, here’s the options. And so I went back and said, Well, how about, we fold it into the family business? And and that’s what we did. And so I don’t think it was unfair. Looking back, I think the entrepreneur in me wants to say it was unfair, like, why can’t I do all these things at the same time, but thinking as a leader of a business, I would certainly hear if I had somebody moonlighting, building something, there’s going to be a point where it gets big enough that I’m like, are you really doing everything you need to do to do your job? Well, so not unfair at all.

Tim Ulbrich  43:50

That was exactly the thought I had, there’s a combination, right? If someone’s looking at this, like as an investor, they would say like, No, Tom, it was your idea. Like you’re you, you were working your butt off, you came up with the idea. But if you think about as a leader, if you think about as a family, you have to put all these factors into play, right, when you’re making these decisions.

Tom Ulbrich  44:06

You do and I had the option to take it off on my own right. Yeah. So that was one of the options was to just go down that path and grow it. But what happens again, safety plays in, right. So that’s a safety decision, what would have happened if we would have taken it off on our own? I don’t know. But I know we were scared. It’s not big enough yet to give us a security back to our security discussion, right? And building up that courage over many, many years to step out on your own.

Tim Ulbrich  44:34

Which is interesting, because you would then take those experiences, right? You live this for two decades plus, and you would then apply and implement those and coach hundreds, thousands of entrepreneurs in their own journey as they’re as they’re navigating some of these things. So there’s the direct influence and impact from business. There’s the indirect and obviously you’re doing it and leading an organization right now. I’m curious as you look back now, you know, making the decision to work for the family business. Right? Ultimately, you’d kind of pivot made mid-career. But if you go back to those those first couple of decades making the decision to work for family business, that you then ended up starting your own business. As with all family businesses, there’s challenges that come into play. Right? So as you look back at that journey, like, would you do it all over again?

Tom Ulbrich  45:20

I think so. There’s pieces I’d like to eliminate for a bunch of different reasons, the struggles part of things. But looking back of who I was, at the time, I wouldn’t be who I am today without all those experiences. And sure, I could go back and say off, I would have went to get my MBA when I was younger, but a whole bunch of things can change. But would I ever have learned all the pieces that make me who I am today? And the answer is, probably, well, not probably the answer is no. I’d be a very different human being. And the truth is, I would probably be because of the safety factor, have been stuck in something I don’t like to do. So this has been a long journey. And you know, God works that way, sometimes. That you have to learn, you got to put your time in, and maybe mine’s longer than most people. But I’ve never been happier than where I am today. And I feel like all those little pieces of making this world successful today, and enjoying what I do, came from all those struggles and all those learnings, all the good and bad when you went through. And if you wouldn’t went through them, you wouldn’t have the skill set that you have today. 

Tim Ulbrich  46:40

I love that because I think sometimes when we make pivots in our careers in our lives, we run the risk of throwing out the experiences of where we’re going into the future. And I think so often the story is, you know, one that you’re sharing right of, hey, you know, sure, could this have been different, or I would have loved it, this went smoother, whatever be the case. But those experiences journeys, led to the moments that are here led to the development, the resilience, all the skills that you’ve learned along the way that are allowing you now to do the work that you’re doing. So I think that’s a great, great reflection. I want to come back. We talked a little bit about this. But Mike and I both started in very traditional career pathways, and now are both in entrepreneurial career pathways. So Mike, I alluded to this earlier, graduated as an industrial engineer, went into corporate finance, very successful, ended up leaving that work at the time, he was living in London, doing some international banking work, just had my niece, Annelie, decided they were going to move from London back to Buffalo without a plan. And he just kind of knew, hey, this is a point we need a pivot, ultimately would lead an advanced manufacturing company for several years, and then has since launched out to have a successful consulting business. And he also owns a business as well. So he’s got a couple of different things there. So went from a very traditional pathway to a non traditional, you know, my story is somewhat similar as well, starting in a very traditional pathway of pharmacy, you know, I’m still connected to the profession, but in a in a very indirect way, having an impact and in a way that maybe I didn’t necessarily think at the beginning. So as you look at that, from your experiences, and kind of where we’re going and you think about your own journey, we’ve talked about safety, like, does that scare you as a father? Does that excite you? Like, what, how do you think of that?

Tom Ulbrich  48:30

There’s times when it scares me, there’s no question, right? And I think there’s that safety baked in as a as a parent, right? Like, you want to make sure everything’s okay. But if you look at the, the, the person, you and Michael as a whole as an individual, and you look at the happiness level, and you know, even when there’s struggles, you’re doing things that you love to do. So it’s actually quite interesting and rewarding for me to watch it. I can’t speak for your mom she might be a little bit more nervous, but I can it’s fun to see that entrepreneurship as part of your lives in your you’re experiencing some of the struggles, but a lot of success from it. And I think about you, I know you’re you know your your time with family and everything and the flexibility that comes with being an entrepreneur, you would never have in a traditional career. Right? And I know you work really hard, but your your work when you need to work and you build time in to support the family when you need it. So I think seeing you do what you love to do is the more rewarding part, even though it can be scary at times, like Is everything okay? Is everything gonna be okay? But luckily you both have done fantastic jobs and with your businesses that are doing, you know, great work as well as seem to be loving what you’re doing. So it’s not, it’s rewarding at this point.

Tim Ulbrich  50:02

I think one of the hardest things I think about this a lot with the boys is like, how do we hold the space to not project our desires onto them, whether that’s a desire of safety, or, you know, it’s easy for me to project, my interests, my skills, but to really try to see them, each uniquely and individually, so hard to do. So hard to do. And I think that, you know, not projecting our desires. What we determined success may or may not look like, is so hard. But I know one of the great joys that I have, is whether or not the boys decide to pursue entrepreneurship. I don’t know, like, if it’s for them, great. If it’s not, that’s fine, too. But there’s a thread that you can see across generations, which is so cool, right? So they’re not in the house with you. But the behaviors, the skills right are being transferred from the role modeling that I had, and now the role modeling that I’m giving them the good and the bad, you know, it’s something I often think about that they hear Jess and I talking about business every day, and I’m trying to be careful about, you know, that that’s not just complaining, but they also hear the wins and the successes, and hey, this happened and this transformation with a client, and this happened with a team member, the highs and the lows, right? Because I think that I don’t want to give them an over glorified image of it. I don’t want to give them a gloom and doom, you know, vision that what it could be as well. 

Tom Ulbrich  51:23

Yeah, I think holding space for we were talking about this the other day, you and I were talking about this, is holding space for the individual gift that God made in each child, right, is really important. And it’s something I very much appreciate in today’s parenting, it seems to be much more thoughtful than, than we were parenting is like thinking like what makes that person unique? What are they truly interested in? What, what jazz’s them, what gets them excited? And also what are the things that maybe are going to derail them because of their personality and the people they are. But I, I really appreciate that, that thought about giving kids space to be who they are. But you also hit on something like many things, and I’m not an expert on all these but many things you can look back and you can see there’s generational like generational curses, generational blessings, 

Tim Ulbrich  52:20

Totally. 

Tom Ulbrich  52:21

You look back, like in our family. There was it goes back even further. So your grandpa’s dad, so your great-great grandpa, he actually worked for American Airlines. But he was very entrepreneurial, he was an intrapreneur within the industry. So that’s another thing you can do. Right? You can be entrepreneurial within a bigger business. He was at the very, very early stages of flight and worked his way from sweeping floors to being the lead of all mechanics in the country at one time for American Airlines. So and very, you know, in aviation was like this new industry…scary. Nobody wants to do a plane, planes used to fall out of the sky sometimes. Right? And prior to that, on your grandmother’s side, so your great-grandmother’s dad was an entrepreneur and had a giant jelly factory. 

Tim Ulbrich  52:28

Brinkman’s Jelly.

Tom Ulbrich  52:51

Brinkman’s yeah. So it, you can see it and I’m sure it goes back earlier than Yeah. So I think role modeling back to yes, that happens. But I think it happens more frequently than we see. And we’re not forcing that role modeling. It’s people wiring to it, right, it’s a young mind, seeing it, wiring it and normalizing something. So your life would be really scary to some other kids that were brought up in a very traditional family with so they’re going to be even more risk averse. I don’t mean traditional family, I mean, traditional career path, right? Where dad goes to work, mom goes to work, they work 8:30-5 o’clock in a big company, whatever it is, where your children are seeing, there’s another way I can do things too. So it’s likely they will do something creative or entrepreneurial, I would say. There’s probably a high propensity and part of their journey back to 50,000 chunks of experience might be that they work in industry for a period of time. Yeah, they may always have that itch. Want to go do something else and they’ll see an opportunity and they’ll you follow it.

Tim Ulbrich  54:32

So let’s shift gears and talk about some financial aspects. After all, this is a financial show. And I’d love to pick your brain, you know, as relates to your own financial journey, I think a lot of wisdom to share with our listeners. And one of things I want to start this conversation with is we often talk about the importance of striking the balance between saving for the future, right planning for retirement, taking care of our future selves while also living a rich life today and I know as someone who’s a saver and he does a good job of thinking about the future. You know, there is that balance for you. And I think that’s something you’ve probably been working on throughout your career. And so my question is like, how have you approached that balance? And like, as you think about this for you and mom, like, what does that rich life look like? What does that mean to the two of you?

Tom Ulbrich  55:17

Yeah, that’s, that’s a hard and interesting question. The, yeah, the fact is, I think you can get caught up in the extremes of both like, not understanding finances, and maybe never saving for anything and living paycheck to paycheck. And you can go the other extreme, of over saving, if that’s such a thing, you’re the financial experts, over saving and never having life experiences with your family, with your spouse with that, and also never having the thrill of philanthropic giving, and supporting other things, with your money, depending on what you what you personally believe you should be doing with that. So we I think we found a good balance, I’m not gonna lie, I still think we’re fine at this point in our lives. But I’m always thinking like, man it’d be nice to have a little bit, you know, bigger nest egg, a little bit bigger nest egg. But I think we found a really good balance many years ago, of starting to make sure we created experiences with family, your mom and I, you know, we do stuff with all of you, right? We try to create those experiences with family vacations. We also do vacations on our own to be a way to recharge, to spend time with each other. And we do a significant amount of that, we do, you know, some philanthropic giving, that we think is really important, supporting causes that are important to us. But I do think finding that balance is important. And I’m not sure, I think where are you find that I believe it’s just like the other topic we’ve been talking about. It’s a learned skill that can be taught. But it’s probably modeled and learned because one of the things I have noticed is, human beings all have a different relationship with money. 

Tim Ulbrich  57:04

Totally. 

Tom Ulbrich  57:05

And a lot of it is what they experience, if you grew up in poverty, you may be really, you know, risk averse about spending money, or you may be the opposite. I’m going to spend everything I make because I saw somebody lose it all, or I live with nothing for so long, I want to make it up. And you know, a great example, this is your grandmother, or great-grandmother lived through the Depression. So her dad was the Brinkman’s Jelly, lost everything in the stock market. And to the day she passed away, if she had a cup of tea, she would reuse the tea bag two or three times because that was how she was wired. Like, why would I waste this when there’s still something good in it, and I think those are situational, they’re how you grow up. But again, financial literacy and education, and the work that you’re doing, and the work that people are doing that, or, um, you know, listening to this super, super crucial that we understand how we’re wired around money, and the pros and cons of our genotype or whatever you want to call it, that that is who we are around money. But back to us, I think we found a good balance, you know, now we’re thinking about the point will come time soon, like, how do you spend it down? Yeah, and how much do you want to pass on to the next generation, but, you know, all those decisions, and I think for me, that’s more the hardest part gonna be. And I think that’s where your company or your business’s type of work, I believe where you really earn your money is probably working with people that are spending money down because that can be complicated. What go, what do I spend first, how much can I spend, I’m gonna run out of money, you know, all those type of things. But I it’s a real thing, right? people’s relationship with money. And it’s all very different. I don’t know it to be a fact. But I can imagine it can be very stressful in a relationship too. If you have people that come at, if their relationship with money, as a child was very different than that mean, then coming trying to manage finances together. So important work you you all are doing in your company. 

Tim Ulbrich  59:19

I’m so glad you mentioned the relationship with money. You know, it’s, it’s until we get real with that and honestly, self reflect what is our relationship with money? How healthy is it? Where did the behaviors come from? Does it cause anxiety, fear, shame, guilt? Do we have an open hand a closed hand without judgment as soon as we can actually understand and assess that we can get real with the financial plan? Because as much as we want to say it’s all objective X’s and O’s. It’s not. It’s not. I mean, that’s all important. Of course it is. But there’s so much behavior, so much emotion, so much learned experiences. Great-grandma’s a great example. It didn’t matter if she had $100 in the bank or $100 million in the bank. She was going to reuse that tea bag, right? The objective numbers didn’t matter, like and we have to think back to what was the dinner table experience, like, you know, what were those and we can’t change those experiences and the things that were great, we take gratitude for the things that weren’t, we can take responsibility and make changes for. But that’s where we start to learn these behaviors that really impact how we relationally connect with money. And the better we understand that, especially when you’re doing this with a significant other/partner/spouse, the better we can start to make progress and doing what we’re talking about, which is finding the balance of the objective side of it and finding the balance on the emotional relationship side of it. And you might not know this, but actually there’s a book called Happy Money we’ll link to in the show notes. There’s a researcher PhD that that’s what she does, she researches the connection between happiness and money. And what the research has supported is the connection, is there really on two things, on giving in on experiences. And when I think about what you and mom have done really well, it’s those two things. You have an open hand and a philanthropic mindset, right. And I think it’s natural that when you have an open hand, and you’re willing to give, you know, I think that you look at the rest of your financial picture in a different, in a healthier way. And when you look at experiences, right, those are memories, you talked about, you know, we take an annual trip as a family to the Finger Lakes. You know, next summer, we’re looking at a trip to Norway with a group of all of us, you and mom go on several cruises a year, you’ve done that, since we were, you know, in middle school. So like, I think the experiences and the giving are key components of the financial plan. And we really want to build the plan around to support those areas, if those are areas of goals for the individuals. 

Tom Ulbrich  1:01:42

That’s interesting. Two points you make that I think are super important is we forget about the motions part of my right, we want to do the X’s and O’s. But also when it comes back to parenting, if those two are really, really important, right, those two things, when it comes to parenting, we have to teach our children that really, really young, right? Like how do we teach our children that giving’s important? And there’s a bunch of ways that you all talk about how you do that. How do you teach that it’s healthy, to invest in experience, experiences that create memories, and it’s also healthy to save. And it’s not all one or the other. It’s all those aspects of what a successful money plan looks like. An even if we’ve talked about this month ago, but even decisions like what type of car you’re going to buy, like, you know, I often once in a while I get this itch, like I want to buy this really, really nice car, mom will say you really want to drive around in a car that’s cost more than people’s homes? And I’m like, no, I don’t want to do that. But t’s okay, if somebody does want to do that if they have the resources that that that is really an individualized decision, all of those decisions. And I think we have to be careful not to pick on our whole pigeonhole ourselves into it’s one or the other or the other. We’ve also seen people be philanthropic to the point that they’re, they’re punishing themselves. 

Tim Ulbrich  1:03:09

That’s right. 

Tom Ulbrich  1:03:09

They can’t, they can’t do anything because they give it all you know, they want to give everything away because it really jazzes them, but they don’t think about what their personal needs are, what other needs are, what long term needs are.

Tim Ulbrich  1:03:22

Yeah, and I think what I’m hearing there is individual. I think so often when it comes to finances we’re, we get caught up whether we know it or we don’t know it and kind of what other people are doing, and really evaluating like, what do we want? What what are the things that are most important to us, not what other people say we should be doing? What do we actually want to be doing and Ramit Sethi in his book, I Will Teach You To Be Rich, he, he talks about this as money dials. So find the things that really mean a lot to you and derive significance. And like prioritize them, dial them up and find the things that you don’t care about, that you’re maybe spending and dial him down, right. And for some people, the dial up might be a car, for others, it might be a dial down, right, everyone’s situation is different. So I love that. Let’s talk about pursuit of retirement. And I think this is interesting, because we just, we throw that term around. And for whatever reason, I think as a society, you know, people if you ask, Hey, when are you gonna retire? 62, 63, 65, right. And that’s kind of a vision they have it’s, it’s sort of this idea, this number, this age that we’ve just thrown out there and we kind of blindly accept. And again goes back to the individual aspects we’re talking about. But when I think about you, right, it’s someone who’s healthy, who enjoys their work, who has the flexibility within your job to do the things that mean the most to you. It really challenges that idea of retirement, like how are you thinking about the next stage in retirement? 

Tom Ulbrich  1:04:53

It’s interesting, because the world does. I think think like this magic number is 62, 65 years old. Again, I think it’s what I’ve learned it’s very, very individualized. Some people have to keep working, because they have to. That’s not my circumstance. I keep working, because I love what I do. And I imagine, I can’t picture the word full retirement, like not doing something everyday. So I don’t know what that means. But I know that at 64 years old, I’m not thinking of even thinking of leaving Goodwill for another four or five, six years, assuming I stay healthy, because I love what I do. And what’s also is really important. Your mom’s retired, but she supports me in what I do and my passions, and we work that out. Because I think sometimes that could be a challenge for couples, right? Yeah, one person’s retired wants to do this, and that, I’m fortunate to have a job, they do have a lot of flexibility in. Significant vacation time. And the most important if you work for somebody else, I have an incredible, we’re nonprofit. So I have a board of directors is my boss, an incredible nonprofit, that we talk transparently about who I am as an individual, what the goals are the company, for the board of directors, what my goals are, and they lean into other things I want to do. So I recently went to them and just went to the chair of the board and said, I thought about leaving to do more consulting, but like, why do I want to do that? And I asked myself, why do I want to go into consulting, I used to do it, I enjoyed it. The reason I wanted to do it is I miss that interaction with entrepreneurs and problem solving. And I found an outlet with that, and the board supported it. So I created a LinkedIn newsletter and launched it and I talk about entrepreneurship. And I talk about social innovation. And I have got so much feedback from people that said, I had you in class or I worked with you that is feeding that part of me that I was missing. So I hate you know, I don’t want to yeah, I don’t want to oversell, you know, I don’t want any of you coming for my job, but I got a really good, I got a good gig, that works for me. And I’m not I am not putting a date on retirement. If it’s not fun anymore, if it’s too challenging, if there’s a health situation, there’ll be a different discussion. But for now, I’m taking that word off the table. I’m gonna live and create, you know, maybe do more experiences, maybe take a couple extra vacations, we try to get down, you know, away to see the boys and do things with the girls. All that’s important. And I think retirement would afford more of that. But not enough to walk away from a job to just think you’re going to do that full time. Because we’re not.

Tim Ulbrich  1:07:49

Yeah, and not everyone right is lucky enough to be in a position where you love the work that you’re doing. And you feel a sense of contribution, right? Because we know I mean, it’s pretty darn clear. Like, you’re getting out, yeah, you’re working, you’re getting paid, but you’re getting a lot of intrinsic value because you feel like every day you’re making an impact and contributing, whether that be to the larger organization, whether that be down to the store level because of the efforts that you’re doing. Whether that be because of the impact you’re having of other entrepreneurs, or leading their staff, like if you just pull the plug on that, because of this illusion of like, I want to retire and do my own thing. We often underestimate what a gap that can be a contribution that you’re making, right? So I think there’s just a ton of wisdom in what you’re sharing there. And really making sure again, going back to the individual aspect, like what do you want, what provides value Oh, and by the way, you’ve put yourself in a position financially, that if something changes, whether that be health, whether that be something with the organization changes, something where you’re no longer, whatever, you have a choice you can make. And I think that that’s such a message we try to convey to our listeners that you want your financial plan to be designed in a way that gives you options, choice and flexibility. And that takes time and hard work. You’ve saved for a long period of time. But you now are in that position of choice as long as it’s going how you want it to go. You keep doing what you’re doing. But if something changes, that’s okay. Like you’re gonna be okay. 

Tom Ulbrich  1:09:18

For sure. And we’re, it’s certainly nice. I’m sure there are people that are trapped because they they didn’t plan successfully, right and or maybe even trapped and have to work longer. That’s not our, my position. You know, I’m fortunate that I could walk out today and we’re fine. Everything’s fine. But that did come through lots of planning and in you know, when we talk about financial planning, it’s not just about money. It’s about other things like health care and long term care and all those type of things that build safety nets around you are things that are getting probably very individualized to what the needs of the person is or what they feel safe around. But, but we’ve got all that. So we’re in a spot where we we could, you know, just stop which which that freedom allows you to really dive in deeper into what you’re doing. Because you’re not worried about all I have to do this or that, to sate to make sure I keep my job or, you know, I don’t want to do something that that might push the envelope a little bit. Because I can’t afford to lose my job and that and being surrounded by people that support you is really, really critical. 

Tim Ulbrich  1:10:31

Yeah. Well, this has been a joy. And by far, not even close, I mean it, that my favorite episode we’ve done in 363 episodes, so I can’t wait for this to get out to the community. I know. It’s one that I’ll be able to go back and listen to for some time. So thank you so much, Dad, for taking the time. I love you and appreciate you sharing your journey with us. 

Tom Ulbrich  1:10:53

You are welcome. I love you too. And Happy Father’s Day. The that will be here in in a day or two. Right? It’s coming quickly. So thanks so much. Appreciate having you again. Love you say hi to everybody. And we’ll chat again soon.

Tim Ulbrich  1:11:12

We’ll do and for our listeners if you want to connect with my dad, we’ll link in the show notes to his LinkedIn profile. Make sure to check out his newsletter as well. It’s great stuff. So thanks so much, dad, take care. 

Tom Ulbrich  1:11:22

Take care.

Tim Ulbrich  1:11:25

[DISCLAIMER] As we conclude this week’s podcast and important reminder that the content on this show is provided you for informational purposes only and is not intended to provide and should not be relied on for investment or any other advice. Information in the podcast and corresponding materials should not be construed as a solicitation or offer to buy or sell any investment or related financial products. We urge listeners to consult with a financial advisor with respect to any investment. Furthermore, the information contained in our archived newsletters, blog posts and podcasts is not updated and may not be accurate at the time you listen to it on the podcast. Opinions and analyses expressed herein are solely those of Your Financial Pharmacist unless otherwise noted, and constitute judgments as of the dates published. Such information may contain forward looking statements, which are not intended to be guarantees of future events. Actual results could differ materially from those anticipated in the forward looking statements. For more information, please visit yourfinancialpharmacist.com/disclaimer. Thank you again for your support of the Your Financial Pharmacists Podcast. Have a great rest of your week.

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YFP 362: Fatherhood, Family, and FIRE with Author Cory Jenks, PharmD


Cory Jenks, PharmD, author, speaker and comedian talks about his newest book on fatherhood titled, “So I Guess I’m a Dad Now.”

Episode Summary

On this episode, Tim talks with Cory Jenks, PharmD, a comedian, pharmacist, author, and speaker who helps create more adaptable, empathetic, and humanizing healthcare experiences. Cory shares his journey of writing his second book ‘I Guess I’m a Dad Now’, why he chose to write a book on fatherhood, the strategies he has employed in his journey of being a dad to three kids ages six and under, and why he and his wife Cassie used a Coast FIRE approach for their financial plan.

About Today’s Guest

Cory Jenks is a convention breaking pharmacist, comedian, author, speaker, and dad from Tucson Arizona. Since earning his Doctor of Pharmacy degree in 2011 from the University of South Carolina, he has been on a mission to help people get off medications through lifestyle. Since 2013, he has taught, coached and performed improv comedy for thousands of people. And since 2022 when his 1st book Permission to Care: Building a Healthcare Culture that Thrives in Chaos, came out, he has been making readers laugh out loud while reading.  His newest book, I Guess I’m a Dad Now, provides practical and hilarious tips, tricks, and stories to help new dads earn that “#1 Dad” shirt they will inevitably be gifted on Father’s Day. With the little spare time he has, Cory enjoys harvesting rainwater, raising chickens, and attempting to play various sports with variable success. He is currently earning his Master’s Degree in Dad Jokes with the help of his daughter and two sons.

Key Points from the Episode

  • Fatherhood and new book release with comedian pharmacist. [0:00]
  • Fatherhood, healthcare, and intentional living as a pharmacist. [3:42]
  • Fatherhood, self-deprecation, and humor. [7:39]
  • The importance of being physically fit for dads, using examples from the speaker’s personal experience. [11:51]
  • Daily routines for physical and mental well-being as a busy dad. [17:43]
  • Parenting challenges and finding balance between work and family life. [21:56]
  • Balancing work and family life, prioritizing presence and play with children. [25:59]
  • Community and support for dads, emphasizing the importance of having a tribe for mental health and personal growth. [31:40]
  • Fatherhood, finances, and intentional spending. [35:01]
  • Financial planning and saving for a couple with different saving mindsets. [39:05]
  • Parenting, financial planning, and work-life balance. [42:20]

Episode Highlights

“And I think that with what I’m doing with this fatherhood book, and what I do with my other speaking, it’s, it’s not just healthcare in comedy, it’s it’s being willing, able, and I’ll use the word brave enough, to break the conventions to live that for life, too.” – Cory Jenks [6:13]

“Humans are humans regardless of their credentials or degree and you can go a long way just living those simple tenets. So a lot more showing than telling, which is great. Set a great example and your kids will do what you do as well.” -Cory Jenks [14:30]

“My vision as a dad is to help my kids fulfill their full potential being physically fit, in addition to mentally fit. Is this an important part and being financially fit as well.” – Cory Jenks [17:26]

“Playing with your kids is just so much fun. And I think the simplicity of that wins out over almost every complicated vacation, app, toy, tool, tech thing you want to do.” – Cory Jenks [31:14]

“I think for a lot of dads who I’ve talked to, they had these like relief moments of like I’m not feeling who feels like this. I’m not alone in this. And guys are not known for our open communication. So if you can find a real life tribe, if it’s an online community, but it’s really supportive and productive, that’s great too. And then sometimes reading a book that makes you laugh and realize okay, I’m not the only idiot dad that does dumb stuff sometimes like okay, if Cory did that, then you don’t feel so bad if you made that mistake, too.” – Cory Jenks [34:18]

Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode

Episode Transcript

Tim Ulbrich  00:00

Hey everybody, Tim Ulbrich here and thank you for listening to the YFP Podcast where each week we strive to inspire and encourage you on your path towards achieving financial freedom. This week I welcome Cory Jenks on to the show a comedian pharmacist, author and speaker who helps create more adaptable, empathetic and humanizing healthcare experiences. During the show Cory and I dig into his journey of writing his second book, I Guess I’m a Dad Now, why he chose to write a book on fatherhood, the strategies he has employed in his journey of being a dad to three kids six and under, and why he and his wife Cassie, used a Coast FIRE approach to their financial plan. 

Tim Ulbrich  00:36

Now, before we jump into my interview with Cory, I have a hard truth for you to hear. Making a six figure income is not a financial plan. Yes, you’ve worked hard to get where you are today. Yes, you’re earning a good income. But have you ever wondered, Am I on track to retire? How do I prioritize and fund all these competing financial goals that I have? How do I plan financially for big upcoming life events and changes? Whether that be moving, having a child, changing jobs, getting married or retiring? Or perhaps why am I not as far along financially at this point in my career, as I think I should be? One of the answers may be that your six figure income, while good is not a financial plan. As a pharmacist, you have an incredible tool in your toolbox. And that’s your salary. But without a vision and a plan that good income will only go so far. That’s in part why we started Your Financial Pharmacist back in 2015. At YFP, we support pharmacists at every stage of their careers to take control their finances, reach their financial goals, and build wealth through comprehensive fee only financial planning and tax planning. Our team of professionals, including our Certified Financial Planners and our CPA, works with pharmacists all across the US to help our clients set their future selves up for success while living a rich life today. If you’re ready to see how YFP can support you on your financial journey, you can learn more by visiting yourfinancialpharmacist.com/learn. Again, that’s yourfinancialpharmacist.com/learn. 

Tim Ulbrich  02:09

Cory. Glad to have you here. Glad to have this time together.

Cory Jenks  02:12

It’s always special with you, Tim. I was just saying before we went live, you’re super generous, super helpful, super supportive. And as a pharmacist and a dad and anyone in this community, you really lift up a lot of us. So thank you. You have been buttered up. Let’s go.

Tim Ulbrich  02:30

Well, I have been looking forward to this. Fatherhood is one of my favorite topics to talk about. We’ve got a couple neat interviews lined up, including yours. My dad’s coming on the show to do an interview next week leading up to Father’s Day, you released a brand new book, I guess I’m a dad. Now we’re going to talk extensively about that. I got my copy, which I feel super special to get a copy of this. I had a chance to read it. I think it was in the near final draft. It was really darn close several months ago and you just did a awesome job. We’ll talk more about that here in a little bit. And we’ve had you on the podcast as interviewed previously, Episode 134. You and your better half Cassie came on the show to talk about your journey as a FIRE enthusiast Financial Independence Retire Early. We had you back on episode 196. You talked about how to use improv comedy. We’ll talk about your role as a comedian to create a better healthcare system. This episode, this interview, we’re gonna take a little bit of a different angle centered around fatherhood. And again, your new book, I Guess. I’m a Dad Now. And before we get too far into the book and the discussion around fatherhood, which I’m confident is going to be rich, give us a brief overview for those that don’t know who you are in the work that you’ve been doing. What has Cory Jenks been up to over the last several decades? Who is this guy?

Cory Jenks  03:52

Oh my gosh, yeah, I don’t make sense. I’ll preface it with that. I get a lot of introductions. And I’ve literally can, I’ll keep this PG but I am a pharmacist. I live in Tucson, Arizona. So logically, I went to the pharmacy school at the University of South Carolina, go Gamecocks. And I moved back to Tucson in 2011 did a residency here at the VA, worked there for a decade plus. And I’ve done everything in pharmacy – inpatient, outpatient ambulatory care. Kind of kind of love the ambulatory care world 2022, I left the VA and worked for another company now doing ambulatory care, but going part time, and if you go back to the Coast FIRE episode with Cassie and I and my wife kind of explaining why we did that, because part of that is I’m a dad of 3- six and under: 6, 4, 1 basically. So drinking from the firehose, the life there. And beyond that I’ve been doing improv comedy and comedy in general for over a decade, which is not a normal pharmacist combination, but there are a lot of us out there. And so I do that and have been really working on reaching out to healthcare organizations about applying these skills, which are not just being funny, that are listening, empathy, communication You wrote a paper in 2019 kind of talking about pharmacy residencies, deficiencies or how our GPA is not measuring everything we need to be successful and it really dovetailed nicely with the start of what I was trying to do. Because I realized that was never going to be on a Saturday Night Live so I can go, please. Yet. Yeah, maybe I will get really famous. And I will then host who knows, I will not limit myself. So yeah, so now I, you know, I’m basically a convention breaking pharmacist, I get people off medicines when I work. In my practice. I do a lot of diet/nutrition counseling. I applied comedy to health care, which is not a normal thing. And now I’m a two time author. So that’s my other book is over my shoulder here, Permission to Care Building a Healthcare Culture that Thrives in Chaos came out in 2022. So if you’re not a dad, and you work in healthcare, and you’re like, I don’t need a dad book. You can get that book too. So, yeah, I think that I get uncomfortable talking about all the stuff I love. Not all, but the stuff I do because I don’t love the narcissistic view Millennials often have of like, I’m doing all these things! But it’s just, I like doing lots of stuff. And if we get into fatherhood, my dad is always someone who’s couldn’t sit still, my grandfather was always someone who couldn’t sit still. And I think Jenk’s men just like doing stuff. So I do lots of stuff that doesn’t always fit into one category. And I think that with what I’m doing with this fatherhood book, and what I do with my other speaking, it’s, it’s not just healthcare in comedy, it’s it’s being willing, able, and I’ll use the word brave enough, to break the conventions to live that for life too.

Tim Ulbrich  06:27

It’s interesting, Cory, you often say, break the conventions, which I see you very much as that person. I also see you as a very intentional person. That’s the theme, the word that keeps coming to mind for me, whether it’s as a father or husband, in your financial journey. Obviously, we’re going to talk about fatherhood today and your physical fitness. We’ll talk about the tie between that and fatherhood as well today, but I see a thread of intentionality and really encouraging motivating inspire in other people in their own journey. And speaking of intentionality, it takes intention, it takes work to write a book, this being your second one. And you and I both know that when you’re self publishing a book, there’s a big investment of time and money and it ain’t about the money. And so my first question is, why write the book? What were you hoping to accomplish when you sat down to write, I Guess I’m a Dad, Now.

Cory Jenks  07:18

I had too much time, money and sanity, it was like I need to throw…. So part of the part of the inspiration for the book came when I when I cut my hours to help watch the kids a couple days a week, hanging out with them at the park and watching other parents and dads interact, or in my case, like not interact with them. Like being on their phones being distracted. And I’m not going to pretend I’m a perfect dad. And then the audio version of this book, my brother-in-law’s an audio. He’s a musician that has a studio so he helped engineer it. And he said, you know, Cory, you know, this is a parenting book, I would expect to have a lot less like self deprecation. I’m like, No, I don’t want to be someone who thinks they know it all because I know they’re lying. So I’m not going to say I’ve never been on my phone around my kids. But seeing a lot of the checkouted dad’s just sort of started sparked an interest and perspective in me of like, there’s a joke there. And I literally wrote a joke in notes phone of like, you know, first idea for the book was, when you’re at the park, make sure you’re not looking at your phone. Yes, I wrote this as I was on my phone. So if you don’t heed this you have you will have wasted the fact that I ignored my kids for five minutes like writing this down. And then from there, it just sort of snowballed into other observations about fatherhood, like my own, our own struggles as parents because I do this along with Cassie, my wife, and observing other dads good, bad, my own shortcomings, my own wins. And basically then trying to turn everything into like a joke so that it’s more easily digestible. Because I think the other impetus for the book was reading, you know, talking about intentionality, like we read some parenting books, and that can be heavy that can be boring. With the acknowledgement that, you know, if dads don’t do our job, like society kind of collapses. So it’s really important job. And I start the book off with some statistics that show that, but also like, if it’s not fun, funny, dudes aren’t gonna want to read it. So how can I turn this message into something that’s easily digestible, realizing that…I don’t know if you’re a Seinfeld fan, but I have a friend that’s like, we could just talk in Seinfeld quotes for the next hour. Yeah, like we could try to give me like two steps of the Krebs cycle, which we had to learn like seven times, we couldn’t do it. But we could go through Seinfeld quotes because when it’s funny, you’re going to remember it. And so that’s kind of the other goal with this book is using that comedy side to turn it to funny, but also using that pharmacist analytical brain to analyze something and sort of flip it in a way that’s like, okay, yeah, that’s true. It’s funny. He made fun of himself or some other unfortunate dad that I observed, and I will not make that same mistake.

Tim Ulbrich  09:43

Yeah, it’s interesting. You mentioned that self deprecation. I thought the humility was there throughout you know, the acknowledgement. You gave the phone example but many others throughout the book where you’re in it, right, six, four, and one. It’s not like you’re waiting until a far off date in the future when you can look back with the glossy version of what was reality, right? You are in the thick of it. And I think as you’re writing in the thick of it, in the moment, it allows for it to be very real, very authentic. And I think it’s just natural, the farther we get removed from it, I know I feel this way with my oldest who’s about to be 13. Like, those memories become fuzzy right over time. And I love the authenticity. I love the realness of it as you wrote it.

Cory Jenks  10:27

Yeah. One is, as you get further from it, the hardness kind of fades, which I think is our nature designs it. Your youngest is what six?

Tim Ulbrich  10:27

Going to be five soon. 

Cory Jenks  10:33

Yeah, so if you, if you really remember how hard it was with your first three, you’d be like, I’m never gonna do this again. But nature is like, you know, we need more people. So I think it’s the same with anything like you look back into pharmacy school wasn’t that bad or high school wasn’t that uncomfortable? Like, no, it was terrible. It felt terrible at the time. And so the subtitle of this is:  A Humorous Handbook for Newish Dads Who Don’t Want to Suck. So it really is for that thinking about kids up to about age five, which is when I finished writing the initial draft. And so and I say it in the book, like, if you want advice for raising a teen, I couldn’t tell you because I’ve never raised the teen. Tim, you could write that book in a couple of years, but I’ve not been in it. So you know, the good joke is like the next volume will be like how to raise from like six to 11, which is like, from what I hear is like a really golden age of kids, because they’re not quite angry teens, but they’re, like, have enough skills, mental and physical to really make the most of those moments that teens won’t be great. And not that having little kids isn’t great, but like a newborn can’t play catch with you. And the other day, like yesterday, we actually played catch with my oldest kid, like he’s able to catch and throw. Like, I was like, Oh my gosh, I was expecting way too much when he was three. Yeah, but it’s kind of a cool moment. Not that you don’t love them when they’re younger. But like when you if they’re able to do more stuff with you, as a dad, you know, I don’t I don’t grow it, I didn’t birth it. Now I can kind of help shape and shape them, he, my kids. ,

Tim Ulbrich  11:57

You know, I was thinking about especially as we we get ready to celebrate Father’s Day here in a couple of weeks that you know how we show up as a dad. And this can be the good, the bad, the ugly, but how we show up as a dad so often stems from how our dad showed up. And you know, they did the best that they could and obviously how they showed up was largely from how their dad showed up. And you know, based on the dedication, where you give a shout out to your dad, I suspect that he’s had a big influence on you and your journey of fatherhood. So tell us about Papa Jenks.

Cory Jenks  12:29

Mark. Mark, was, I don’t know if he’s, he’s, he’s here. Like we’re doing this live as we record it on LinkedIn. He’s on LinkedIn. He likes to comment on my posts, but he still teaches he’s a PE teacher. He teaches at the University of Arizona now in the College of Ed, but he’s, you know, I think he was someone that really showed by example. He’s from a small upstate New York town. You know a few things about upstate New York. His parents, my grandparents were like, when that generation was called the silent generation. I think they named it after Harry and June, like not that they didn’t love you. But they just dinner was very quiet because we’re eating and that’s in my a lot of feelings talk not a lot of like warmth, I love you love us, but a lot of showing love by you know, all the memories I have with my grandfather – building things, having those memories together. And then my dad, like he loved me, he was always there to support me. And unfortunately for him, like he was a great athlete, played college football. I was not that good. But he still supported me, helped coach me. And I think that the big things I got out of it from him were how to work hard. How and we talked about finances like he would teach, he was a teacher. So in the summer he was off but he would teach swimming lessons, he would coach to earn extra money. And I remember going with him to the place he taught swim lessons because they had a place where I could play and he’s like, alright, well, this is our vacation this summer. Like those little things stuck with me. And he tells tells me about how grandpa would change the oil in their own car instead of taking it he’s like, Well, that’s a dinner instead of paying someone the money to do it. So I think he really showed me the value of hard work and utilizing those skills to support yourself and not being afraid to you know, we say side hustle now. Millennials and Gen Z is all about the side hustle like my dad and grandfather were the original side hustlers. They just didn’t call it that. So, taught me the value of hard work and then the message I write about in the book is he was very supportive in a pragmatic way. Like I would be you know, I’m going to pharmacy school, Dad,  this is healthcare. This isn’t just teaching kids dodgeball. Okay, this is big time stuff. He’s like just show up on time, work hard and be pleasant. It’ll be fine. But it’s healthcare, Dad! And then every step of the way through undergrad pharmacy school, residency, I was like, oh, yeah, you’re right. Humans are humans regardless of their credentials or degree and you can go a long way just living those simple tenets. So a lot more showing than telling, which is great. So set a great example of your kids will do what you do as well because you know, he played racquetball golf, like doing all the same activities as him too. so inspires me to try to make sure that instead of telling my kids stuff, I’m showing them.

Tim Ulbrich  14:55

Cory, when I think of you, you know the words that come to mind if we do word association with Cory, right I think pharmacist, I think FIRE enthusiast, I think comedian, author, speaker, I think fitness guru as well. I know that’s an important part of your life journey. And you brought that into the book and chapter two, you talk about the connection between your passion for fitness and health and why that’s important, as soon to be, although I would, I would argue whether it’s someone who’s expecting or thinking about having kids or, you know, your 10 plus years into it, it’s a priority, and they’re very much is a connection. Tell us more about what that connection is, and why you felt like that was important bring into the book.

Cory Jenks  15:35

There’s sort of the celebration of DadBod, which is sort of like, Oh, I’m, you know, my wife’s pregnant, and I’m gonna, you know, look like her too. You kind of let yourself go. And I don’t think that body shaming is great, I think they’re a little shame might be good. Like, because kids are energetic. They’re, they want to keep going. And I just see, so often, kids with fathers who are out of shape that are just like play with me, play with me that they’re just like, oh, I can’t, I can’t. And if you if you don’t have like, I there are, if you play the comparison game, there’s always gonna be someone who’s way fitter than you and way less fit than you. But if you are able to keep up with your kids have some muscle like, like every night that kids fall asleep in a different room, and I have to carry them to the other room, like my four year old is 40 pounds, and he’s on the other side of this full size bed, like, there’s some functional fitness picking up 40 pounds and lugging it across the hall. So if you really want to be there for your kids, as a dad, I think it’s non-negotiable to be in shape for to be there for them. And also to set the example because I can’t tell you the number of kids I grew up playing league or soccer or whatever, that their parents are very out of shape. And they’re like, you will play sports and the kids like, well, you’re not doing anything, right. Like, you know what your words are hollow with your actions or not. So and setting the example like my dad was a PE teacher, so he was always active, he hit me, he’s, he’s such a, I’ll use the term like adorable nerd about this stuff. So send me articles about like, you know, if you get 10,000 steps a day, you look five extra years, or like what you know, and it’s great. Like, that’s what a great example, the set and then we see that with our kids that for my six year olds birthday, he got a pull up bar for the door. So he looks like climbs and hangs and we play, you know, we’re active. And it doesn’t mean that you have to play sports or be in the sports. But I think that being physically active is non-negotiable. And I think that if you want to help your kids fulfill their greatest potential, which is sort of I got asked this on a podcast the other day, like what’s your like, kind of vision as a dad is to help my kids fulfill their full potential being physically fit, in addition to mentally fit. Is this an important part and financially fit as well. Yeah. Yeah, getting getting getting your gear in shape. And ignoring the siren song of the dad bod is is important to, in my opinion.

Tim Ulbrich  17:43

Yeah, the connection you just made is interesting. And we often talk about helping our kids to be the best version of themselves, which requires a ton of time, attention and understanding who they are. And each one of them is very unique. And I think that becomes a little bit more evident. Like as I think about where my boys are at in age, I’m seeing it more and more with my older three. And it takes time and patience. But what’s underneath that is interesting what you’re saying, right? Someone’s physical health, mental health, we know that as adults that how critical those things are. When those are humming, we are more likely to be bringing the best version of ourselves, right? We feel better, we feel more engaged. We’re better in relationships. I mean, there’s such a stemming effect from that, which is a good segue. I’d like to kind of peek into the author’s brain here. Like for you, physical health, obviously a priority. I know emotional health, spiritual health, financial health other things. What are the routines that you have employed in your day? Or your week, however, you want to frame this that have allowed you to bring the best version of Cory every day? What are those habits?

Cory Jenks  18:45

Yeah, this is this is the part where you’re, you might not want to hear all this because it’s hard for some to hear, but I get up early. Like so with kids, they’re either gonna get up early, or they’re gonna stay up late. So you so adjusting around my kids schedule, and I get up around most days between like four and five o’clock in the morning. And that first 15 minutes is usually some version of like brushing teeth, my eyes half opened and like getting chores done around the house, like prepping the day like getting getting lunches ready, like my wife and I make these like collagen gelatin beverages. So like getting those all teed up so that when she wakes up, we can just hit the button and we’re going. So taking care of my spouse, that’s a big part of it. I tried to sit quietly for like, even just like two to two to five minutes, just to have a few moments of just trying to like breathe a little bit. And then two days a week, I’m doing a 15 minute quick, quick and dirty fitness routine, which if you’re listening or watching this, if you buy the book, I’ll send you my my routine. It’s part of my preorder bonus, but it’s already out so I’m just gonna send it to you if you want it. It’s just a very simple short routine because with three kids I don’t have time to hit the gym a ton, and then two days a week it’s it’s like going for a run or doing some some HIIT like some sort of like, I don’t know what interval interval training or something like that and I have a father in my neighborhood that we go for a run once a week. So helping, you know, helping bring another dad into this fold, you know, he says I hate getting up in the morning. And that’s why I do it. So do that, if I’m able to, you know, a couple days a week, it’ll be some writing in the morning, because I write a newsletter and then trying to promote myself on Twitter or LinkedIn trying to come up with something there. And then a couple days a week, I’m at work. And then the other days, I’m with my kids, and just try and be with them. And then in the evening, it’s winding down, get them to bed, if I’m, if I’m humming real good, I just go out and read a book or strum a guitar or, or do something like that. And if it’s not, then I’ll try to check it up notification, I’m turning 30 minutes into warmholing. So I’m just like you, everybody gets stuck on the computer. So and then I mean, foodwise, if you want that part, too, I mean, from fitness side, I eat a lot of protein, a lot of veggies, not a lot of carbs, and fats, and don’t overthink it. So that’s, that’s the main thing. And then just always checking in from a from a from a relationship side of it, checking in with my wife, making sure she’s taken care of, her needs are taken care of. Because she bears the brunt of our baby at night. So she’s, you know, and on top of all this, I’m Cassie jokes that there’s a Laundry Fairy and a Dinner fairy. Because Dishwasher Fairy because I’m the one that does all that. So fathers are not off the hook there. Started doing a lot of the chores around the house, because she does a lot of the other stuff that I can’t do. And then usually at the end of the day, our joke is we say good morning, and we’re trying to lay down a bed at night because we’re so so busy. So it’s going to probably depending where you’re at in life, if you’re a dad or not, or even if you’re not a dad, I think having some of these routines is good. And I a big part of it for me is simplicity. And I know just spent three minutes rambling about stuff, but you know, there’s people are like you get up you do 15 minutes of journaling, you just seven minutes of breath work, you’d look at the sun with your eyes closed, you look at it without like, Yeah, but then your kid wakes up at 5:15 with a bloody nose and all that’s out the window. So how can you maintain that good day without having all these things that are locked in place.

Tim Ulbrich  21:56

That’s exactly where my mind was going. I’m so glad you said it. Because as I think about my own journey here in Utah, I have found the morning routine is a non negotiable for me. And granted, I’m a morning person, I’m not a four or 4:30 morning person, but I’m a morning person. And I’m grateful for the flexibility to really start the first couple hours of the day. And as my boys would be gotten gotten older, it’s more predictable, right. But it wasn’t always predictable. And there are seasons where it is not predictable. And I think my encouragement to those listening is to find the system and the routine that works for you. That gives you enough structure that really helps move the needle on the things that matter the most but also enough flexibility that, hey, one season looks very different than another and you can be humming. And then a month later, it’s like why aren’t my kid ever sleeping, I’m not getting up at 4am. And I got to shift some of this. I’m a morning person, but I gotta shift this. And I think sometimes if there’s too much rigidity, especially for those with young kids, sleep is variable kids get sick, we know this happens, right? That’s when we feel defeated, all of a sudden the guilt comes in. And that’s not productive, you know, in any way, shape or form. So I’m a big fan of like, hey, find, the system and the routine, but especially for those with young kids, like give yourself some grace and some flexibility that things are gonna change. It’s gonna happen.

Cory Jenks  23:13

Yeah, I liked the things you said there, the seasons. I think that’s something that Cassie and I talk a lot about us that, season X where we I mean, we had a newborn, a five year old, a three year old and it’s just chaos. What we found works is what is the minimum we both need, like we talked about, you know, you and I have talked about, like filling your bucket every time like, what’s the minimum you need, and Cassie knows that I need like 15 minutes to lift weights and like a 30 minute walk. And I’m like in a much better like she’ll say you need to go for your walk or you need to go for your run. And I know that if I get that she knows if I get that like I’m good to go for the day I like I just need physical movement. I mean I’m a pharmacist, I work at a job where I sit like hunched over all day, so I need some of that movement. But for everyone’s going to be different. And like you say that the rigidity and there’s you don’t have to feel guilty about taking care of yourself as a parent. Your kids are pretty resilient. Like that doesn’t mean you ignore them for eight hours while you watch Netflix. But it does mean that if you need to like they watch a show for 30 minutes while you walk or do you just even if it’s clean the dishes and or whatever in your house. It clears your mind so much so and then also to stay off Instagram because every father Instagram account that I was trying to use to like promote my book just makes you feel like the worst dad ever. So just ignore those and you’ll be good to go.

Tim Ulbrich  24:31

Yeah, one of the greatest challenges great, I think a parenthood is being present, truly present in the moment and the experience that’s in front of you, you know, not cut up in analyzing the past worrying about what may or may not come in the future. Easier said than done, off course and we’re not going to get this perfect. But you talk about this in the book in chapter six. All it takes is being president let me read the first couple paragraphs and then I’ve got a question for you. You say, “A lot of newish dads wonder if they will be ‘enough’ for their kids. Will they make enough money to support their family? Will they provide enough emotional support? Will they be enough for their kids to love them, or at least tolerate them? To make this happen, dads can sometimes go overboard working, trying to pry the feelings out of their kids and smothering their kids with so much love that the kids will actually push away. I shared those feelings of needing to be enough. While more money is nice, it’s important to be a loving and emotional pillar. There’s just one trick to success as a father, be present.” Be present. Now, this if you had to say, Hey, Tim, what’s probably one of the greatest challenges you’ve had, as a father, I would say it’s really honing in on this. And again, there’s permission and grace that needs to come in here as well. What, for you, has been the secret or has allowed you to be as present as possible as a father? You just talked about in the book how important it is.

Cory Jenks  25:52

Well, I don’t know if it’s a secret so much as a lot of self reflection and being called out for not being present. I think having having a having if you’re there, if you’re raising them with you, with your spouse, with your wife, and she’s like, Hey, you’re on your phone, that like that’s a dagger to be like, Okay, I’m not there. But like going through the different pillars of like, what would take you out of the moment with your kids. So there’s, there’s work and so I, the longer I’ve worked, the better I’ve been at leaving work home when I come home. That being said, like in a world of entrepreneurship, like the work typically, I mean, literally never ends. So there’s always like a notification, you could check, there’s always something you can do there, so trying to block time to be like, okay, when they’re at school, like for this hour, I’m working on it, and then like letting it go. So just letting stuff wait. And it could wait. I do comedy, there’s never a comedic emergency. So like, there’s no, there’s no need to get to that. I think that the other pillar’s of presence. So like trying to earn a ton of money for your kids, like my kids. It’s like the trope of like, they’ll play with a box or like a stick in dirt, or a balloon. And this is something that’s probably one of the biggest conflicts with the grandparents, it’s like you stop getting them stuff, like they’re so happy with the balloon like imagine a world where you could be entertained with a balloon for an hour, we would all be so much happier if we didn’t have to feel like we’ve spent money on stuff. So if I’m not taking myself literally, physically away trying to earn money to buy stuff I don’t need that I’m going to be more present. And fortunately, again, I’m married to someone who’s not a huge like checking phone person. So I kind of take cues from Cassie and we have a spot where we charge it in our laundry room. And we’re pretty good about just ignoring that and just not trying to kind of piggybacking off that, like there’s a chapter in the book, like don’t try to like make memories. Like you let the memories happen. So if you’re not in this is a sort of pet peeve of mine, like we don’t try to document everything with like every, we don’t do a picture of video of like every little cute thing, because you literally can’t. Because if you’ve tried to do that, you’re going to take yourself out of the moment of taking a picture, is it good enough, we’ll take another picture. Well, now the kids want to look at the picture. And then if you’re someone who posts stuff publicly, then you’re posting it, then you’re checking on the comments of those things. And so we don’t, we don’t put anything with our kids on the internet, short of like the backs of my kids heads, which just hit the back of my baby’s head spoiler alert, you can see the back of my baby’s head at the end of the book, if you make it through. I think that’s been a big part of it is just living within our house instead of worrying about what other strangers on the internet or, you know, acquaintances might think of what we might post. So we, we we like we’d go on vacation, we have a policy, like we take one picture at the beginning, we put the phones away, and then we just play, we’re gonna like we accept that we’re gonna miss stuff. But we were telling our kids last night about the good old days when you had 25 count disposable cameras and that’s all you got. So trying trying to live a little bit less fast, I guess.

Tim Ulbrich  28:40

And what I heard throughout all that Cory was: we. You know, we we, we, right? There’s tactical strategy you talked about where you put your phone and how you handle vacation, the posts and all that stuff. But it’s we. It’s, hey, we’re on the same page with this and through the “we.” There’s accountability, you know, in that process as well. So great, great insights to share there. I want to ask you about play. I have found for me, when I am truly involved in play with my boys, like those are the moments that really are rich memories. But those are the moments where I am all in present. I’m talking about like rollerblade hockey on the driveway, like epic games of soccer in the basement. You know, freeze tag. Not we’re like I’m kind of having like a yeah, I’ll play, or I’m watching, but like I’m actually in on the play. And I’m curious to hear for you, like is that a similar experience? or what have you found in terms of how important play is when it comes to engaging and be involved present as father.

Cory Jenks  29:39

I’m glad you said that because it was a great reminder for me that it’s probably one of the most if not most important ways to be present. I can’t you know, yes, we all have presence. I’d even say play. My goodness. Read my own book. Yeah, I think and this is just to use that improv comedy side of my brain. Improv is adult play and kids we play we live in the moment. We grow up, we have responsibilities, we have jobs. So like when I’m doing an improv scene, like you have to totally be in that moment, it’s you talked about the like moments of flow and creativity and being all present, like improv forces you to do that and playing with your kids. If you’re doing it right, if you’re not trying to record everything to put on YouTube, if you’re not trying to document every little thing, you’re just playing, those are the moments that you’re going to be totally in it with your kids, you’re having fun, you’re and the time like slip like it’s a combination of it, like slows down and it speeds up because you’re like, oh my gosh, that was an hour of playing. But it was so much fun. And for kids development, I this is you know, not an expert writing a book. But it’s everything that I’ve been reading and I just read a great book called The Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt talking about all the issues that screens potentially could be having on our kids. Like play builds resilience, it builds it builds neuroplasticity. So for all you pharmacy leaders out there who want to have another PowerPoint on resiliency, just like let your staff go out and play tag or something. Like you’re literally better off than trying to like cram down more information. That’s a little side pet peeve of mine, but yeah, the place where they’re gonna like they’re gonna learn like right and wrong, what boundaries to push. And yeah, for us, it’s a lot of a lot of wrestling to the point of you talking about being physically fit, like, like, kids beat me up. There’s strong. But yeah, we were just they just learned the great game of Three Flies Up the other day. So and it’s just it’s it’s so much fun with like, let’s play Three Fies Up. Let’s play this. And you’re just playing. And and that is I think the the simplicity, the simplicity of that wins out almost over every complicated vacation, app, toy, tool, tech thing you want to do. And yeah, yeah, you’re right. I won’t ramble anymore on that, because you actually made the point better than I have in the last two minutes.

Tim Ulbrich  31:40

No, it’s great. And it really is a good reminder and challenge for me, I wish I get there more often, when I really let myself into those moments like, again, were really rich memories. But as you alluded to the time really does kind of fly and pass away. And I think it’s important that they see Dad, in a very different environment, you know, I can get into a very structured, everything so serious, we got things to do, places to go, right life’s busy, and like to really have a space where we can play and engage without that type of structure. I think it’s so rich, to really see me in a different light right than they probably do. And other other moments and other seasons. I want to ask you about community. You mentioned this a little bit when you’re talking about a neighbor. I sense that there’s maybe some community there and the influence there. But I have found for me, you know, I’ve got a core group of men that are absolutely critical. When I think about having a safe place, a truly safe place where there is vulnerability that is allowed. There’s accountability, that is key to that group. And I’m curious for you, whether it’s a group, a guy, some friends, like as a father, as a husband, when you think about bringing your best self, like, what does the role of community play for you?

Cory Jenks  32:56

Oh, it’s huge. I think you got to have your tribe and I think we’ve evolved as tribal creatures and we’ve now found these like weird online tribes that don’t actually mean anything and support us in fact, actually probably hurt our mental health. But for me, I have there’s four or five other families in our neighborhood around the same age, kids around the same age and we joke because all the the wives and moms are older than the dads so they’re the Cougar Club. We call ourselves the Manthers. I mean, it’s silly. Like you’re talking about play, like it’s ridiculous. So we’ll go on, like yesterday I went I went on a run with one of the guys. Like everyone has their own little like strength like there’s one that’s like a phenomenal engineer that helped me design and build my chicken coop. There’s one that I go run with. There’s the one that’s like the more like feelings guy, so when I need to talk about something like that, we go for a walk and it’s it’s really great there. And then I have friends that are across the country that it’s just a text. I text my buddy Kendrick more than I text my wife so we go back and forth with the wins the losses and just there to share and listen. And that’s one thing that and even like yesterday at this Memorial Day party we were at as we record this, like was talking to the dads and the moms too like sharing our struggles with our own families and issues and just being having just, sometimes just talking about it you feel so much better. It doesn’t solve the problem but it helps to feel like you’re not alone. And I you know as selfishly, like this book I think for a lot of dads who have read it and I’ve talked to, they had these like relief moments of like I’m not feeling who feels like this. I’m not alone in this. And guys are not known for our open communication. So if you can find a real life tribe, if it’s if it’s an online community, but it’s really supportive and productive. That’s great too. And then sometimes reading a book that makes you laugh and realize okay, I’m not the only idiot dad that does dumb sometimes like okay, if Cory did that, then you don’t feel so bad if you made that mistake, too. So and then having your group of people that are have skills you don’t have mostly because I’m not handy. So I talked about the importance of that, too.

Tim Ulbrich  35:02

My experience has been, you know, in the absence of community, or present in isolation, I think the challenges that we inevitably will face can start to bleed with our identity. And we get those two things confused. And I think really having a group of people around us, you know, you mentioned your book, right? The people that read that and say, hey, wow, like, I’m not alone, I have these feelings, it’s okay to have these feelings. I don’t have to be defined by these feelings like, these are to be expected on some level. And there’s other people that are going through this journey. And again, it’s going to have highs, it’s gonna have lows, that is a roller coaster. That’s the reality of fatherhood. And so I think whatever that community looks like neighbors, you know, people across the country, friends, whatever be – so important, you know, and for me, at least, as I think about my own journey of fatherhood. I do want to talk a little bit about finances as a finance platform afterall. You talked about finance in the book as well, chapter 15, titled Money, Money, Money. And I think you scratch the surface on some important topics, you know, life insurance, estate planning and building a strong financial foundation. Obviously, you didn’t, you didn’t set out to write a personal finance book, so I wouldn’t have expected you to go a lot deeper. But I want to go a little bit deeper with you. As I know, this is an important part of your financial plan and journey. And as we’ve already established, I think there is a connection, when we think about this to fatherhood as well. We’re not going to re live your entire financial journey. We talked about a lot of that on episode 134, with you and Cassie talking about your FIRE pathway. But I do want to start there FIRE: Financial Independence, Retire Early. I know that’s been a key pathway for you and Cassie, as you think about your own financial journey and success, why has the FIRE ourney been important, continue to be important for the two of you?

Cory Jenks  36:45

Well, I will say I will disclose that we are not at the FIRE level. So it is a journey. But I think what we found in 2017, when we kind of found this idea of FIRE was it forced us to re examine our finances. It forced us to look at how we were spending money and you you mentioned the word intentionality at the beginning of the recording, that we realized a lot of our money was going places we weren’t really being intentional with and because we were blessed with big shovels. She’s a nurse practitioner, I was working full time as a pharmacist, you paper over a lot of your mistakes. And you the 401k is growing pretty good things are looking good. You’re living a happy life or taking vacations. And then realizing that there’s there’s this point like 1000s of dollars a month that we can be reallocating to more efficient and effective ways of establishing our future in a more secure way, then you become intentional with that. And while we haven’t hit full FIRE, we talked about this idea of Coast FIRE where we stayed really despite our mistakes. Because we are we are blessed to have jobs that have the big larger incomes, compared to the average American, we hit a place with the idea of Coast FIRE, you save a lot in retirement and get to a place where at that point like time and competition will get you get you to the finish line. And so we’ve more or less hit that place. It doesn’t mean we’ve totally stopped saving, but it’ll allocates more funds for inevitable kid expenses. It allowed me to cut part time. Gives me a little breathing room when I invest in a another self published book. Because, by the way, if you want to write a book get really famous first so they give you a big advance. If you have a huge audience to start, it really helps. Just a little insider tip there. But it’s been an important part of us to be intentional with how we spend money and like, it’s a mindset, like we just bought a new, like a new vehicle to us. It’s an eight year old vehicle. But we spent two years figuring out what we wanted. Like it was a two year process. Our family was so tired of us talking about it. But when you think about I could spend $70,000 on a new vehicle or I could spend $25,000 on a vehicle like what’s the delta of that money? What could it be used for? What’s the opportunity cost? What’s the time I’m going to spend and I we talk a lot about like the life energy to buy something, your money or your life concept. And so it really affects us when we decide do we really need to buy that thing for the kids, we really need to buy that other thing, or with going out with three little kids to a restaurant really bring us much joy? No. Save the money and cook at home and, you know, watch a Netflix movie or something instead.

Tim Ulbrich  39:04

Yeah, and I think it’s a Coast FI is an interesting pathway. You know, not everyone obviously is able to do it, everyone comes out with a different income level, different debt position, other goals that they’re working on. But when I think about the journey that you and Cassie are on now that you’ve got six, four, and one, you know, essentially, as you mentioned, you’re not not saving anymore, but you’ve largely checked that box because time value money is going to do its thing, right? And so you’re entering into the ages were experiences and time to get those experiences is going to be more readily available, right? I mean, there’s only so much you can do with a one year old, obviously. But as they get older, like the opportunity to travel, the flexibility that you guys have in your schedule to do whatever it means for you guys to be living your rich life that’s going to become more available and to have the opportunity to invest in those experiences to a greater degree I think is exciting. And you know, perhaps a reason for aggressive saving early is great. I am curious. I know one of the most common questions I get, Cory, when people are thinking about really FIRE any part of the financial plan, is how to me and my spouse get on the same page. You know, one person may be an aggressive saver one is not or there’s different philosophies, different mindsets, different ways that they grew up with money. So for you and Cassie, as you’ve been on this journey, I sense you’re very much on the same page. But what allowed you the two of you? Is that where you started? Or was this a process that you guys developed over time.v

Cory Jenks  40:31

I was definitely much more like the saver mindset, not that she was like a frivolous spender. But I think what we did was a lot of shared, like we did podcasts and book clubs. I would literally listened to an episode of YFP. And be like, hey, what do you think of this idea of an HSA account? And you know, the various financial podcasts, but I’m gonna plug you guys because you’re the best, and your pharmacists. If you Google other resources, you can find them. But YFP is  a great place to start, so you listen to a podcast. And  we do book clubs together, like we would read a book or because she’s kids, I read a book, take notes and go through the highlights with her. And it just it provokes questions. It provokes discussions. And it’s never a, you’ve spent this, I can’t believe that you didn’t spend this, I can’t believe it. I don’t know, I’m just I’m very blessed to be married to someone who’s like we’re both when it comes to finances pretty reasonable people who want to meet in the middle and have not had a lot of, I can’t remember a money fight honestly, we’ve ever had. Because maybe the only one being like Cory, we can spend more like okay, fine, save less. And that was that was the hardest thing was to take the break off the savings. But I think like turning it into an activity versus a chore. If it means you have a nice dinner and talk about it, if it means you’re on a walk together. And you each have a Bluetooth pod, like your air pod, and you’re listening to Tim and Tim and talk about something. You pause it and say that was good, or I don’t understand that. That’s where we started. And it really hasn’t been a huge conflict for us.

Tim Ulbrich  42:04

Yeah, and I love the concept of the book club and just getting thoughts moving, right, conversation starters, we did an episode not too long ago, around 25 Financial discussions that couples should have, and it really wasn’t about like, Hey, you should do X, Y, and Z. It was about start talking about, you know, these areas. And there’s, of course more questions in that and figure out for the two of you what what does it mean to be living that rich life? What does it mean to have that balance between today and tomorrow? And, you know, the back of the back of your book, you referenced several books, one of which, you know, I know has been transformational on my journey Die with Zero by Bill Perkins. But even reading books that have different philosophies, different perspectives, just to get things moving. Conversation wise and figure out, hey, for the two of you, what does success look like? And I often share that we get in the weeds with the X’s and O’s. All of those are important. But we often have to start at a higher level, which is what what is the vision? What does success look like for the two of us? What do we want this to look like for our family? And then from there, the X’s and O’s have to support that vision?

Cory Jenks  43:07

Yeah, I think I skipped over the strategic vision and goal setting and skipped right to the tactical stuff that we would do. But yeah, I think yeah, you nailed it. Having the, I think I think what helped us get on the same page was, what do we want our life to look like? What are the what’s the one year goal, five year goal, 10 year goal? What’s retirement goal look like and then working backwards from there, you can decide what that how that fits into your day to day. And I think having that ultimate vision of how we want our life to be is important. And for both of us, the biggest thing we care about is options. We want to have options to manage, to own as much of our own time. And we were not 100% there yet, but it’s been a very useful journey in helping us get to where we, you know, it’s we’re recording this on a Tuesday morning and she’s home. She’s not working today, and I’m not working today. And our kids are, you know, in a perfect world, they’d be home with us and we you know, making memories but they’re exploring. We get a little bit of adult freedom and don’t feel guilty about that when you do need it, by the way.

Tim Ulbrich  44:05

Yeah, options and flexibility. When I poll a group of pharmacists, I serve a group of pharmacists and say, hey, what, what’s most important to you, right? That those are the two things I hear over and over and over again. And sometimes we get lost in the weeds of hey, do we need 2 million or two and a half or three or three and a half million and those are good conversations, but really, it’s often the emotion behind that. What are we trying to achieve? What does that vision look like? Cory, this has been great. So I Guess I’m a Dad Now:  A Humorous Handbook for Newish Dads Who Don’t Want to Suck. If I can make one gentle amendment to your subtitle, I appreciate the focus for new-ish but I found this as a father of four soon to be teenager. I don’t consider myself a new or new-ish dad. But I found this to be incredibly insightful and helpful. So I would say for dads everywhere at any stage, adult children, soon-to-be, expecting, planning kids, could make a great Father’s Day gift. So where’s the best place that people can go to get a copy of the book and follow your work? 

Cory Jenks  45:03

It’s on Amazon. So you could look you could just look the title up there on Amazon. If you go to my website Coryjenks.com C-O-R-Y-J-E-N-K-S.com. My parents were cheap, didn’t but the “E” in Cory, although I should probably buy that domain and just send people to my website. You can, you can get some information on like, I still have my pre order stuff up so you can see what if you if you order the book, just email me I’ll send you all the pre order stuff. We’re dads we’re busy. We didn’t get we didn’t get there in time. It’s okay. You can kind of see the other stuff I’m up to and you can connect all my different socials from from my website.

Tim Ulbrich  45:35

Awesome, Cory thanks so much for doing the interview. Appreciate it.

Cory Jenks  45:38

Anytime this is you know, you talked about playing time flying by I can’t believe it’s almost been 50 minutes, Tim. It always happens. So that’s a sign of a great a great time. So thanks again and anytime you want to chat, happy to. Thanks.

Tim Ulbrich  45:50

Thank you so much. Take care. 

Tim Ulbrich  45:53

As we conclude this week’s podcast an important reminder that the content on this show is provided to you for informational purposes only and is not intended to provide and should not be relied on for investment or any other advice. Information in the podcast and corresponding material should not be construed as a solicitation or offer to buy or sell any investment or related financial products. We urge listeners to consult with a financial advisor with respect to any investment. Furthermore, the information contained in our archived newsletters, blog posts and podcasts is not updated and may not be accurate at the time you listen to it on the podcast. Opinions and analyses expressed herein are solely those of Your Financial Pharmacist unless otherwise noted, and constitute judgments as of the dates published. Such information may contain forward looking statements, which are not intended to be guarantees of future events. Actual results could differ materially from those anticipated in the forward looking statements. For more information, please visit yourfinancialpharmacist.com/disclaimer. Thank you again for your support of the Your Financial Pharmacists podcast. Have a great rest of your week.

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YFP 361: 4 Timely Questions for Homebuyers


Tony Umholtz, Senior Vice President of Mortgage Banking at First Horizon, returns to discuss four questions prospective home buyers should consider. This episode is brought to you by First Horizon.

Episode Summary

Tony Umholtz, Senior Vice President of Mortgage Banking at First Horizon returns to discuss four questions that prospective home buyers must answer including buy now versus wait, rules of thumb lenders are using to determine lending limits, the potential impact of the recent settlement from the National Association of Realtors, and the current state of how student loan payments are being factored into the lending calculations. 

About Today’s Guest

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

Key Points from the Episode

  • Housing market trends and timely questions for homebuyers with expert insights. [0:00]
  • Housing market trends, including shifts towards a buyer’s market with more inventory and lower interest rates. [4:10]
  • Home purchase decision-making, lending rules, and interest rates. [9:56]
  • Real estate industry changes and their impact on homebuyers. [14:18]
  • Real estate industry disruption, student loan debt, and lender perspectives. [20:46]
  • Student loan repayment options and their impact on debt-to-income ratio, with a focus on income-driven repayment [25:04]
  • Mortgage options for pharmacists with 3-5% down payment. [30:21]

Episode Highlights

“We’re seeing we’re seeing more inventory, more availability for buyers, that wasn’t there in the past. And I think that’s part of normalization. We’re still not completely normal. But we are getting closer.” – Tony Umholtz [4:07]

“I’ve always believed in 22 years in this industry, if someone’s going to be in an area for five years or more, when you look at the alternative of renting versus owning, I think it makes sense to own no matter what the environment. Rents go up over time. You don’t build equity. But with buying, you’re going to come out ahead in five years even if values are zero appreciation, right? You’re going to benefit by owning that home even if there’s no appreciation.” Tony Umholtz [6:55]

“Looking at the housing market, and maybe outside of COVID, it’s always kind of been better to buy a home when the markets are down. When everyone’s buying, then you’re competing with everyone and you just don’t get as good of a deal. I looked at that in my own life – when I buy, it seems like when things were slower in the market; I always did better versus when everyone’s looking.” – Tony Umholtz [11:20]

Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode

Episode Transcript

Tim Ulbrich  00:00

Hey everybody, Tim Ulbrich here and thank you for listening to the YFP Podcast where each week we strive to inspire and encourage you on your path towards achieving financial freedom. This week I welcome Tony Umholtz back on to the show as Senior Vice President of Mortgage Banking at First Horizon. On today’s show, we discuss four timely questions that prospective homebuyers must answer, including whether to buy now versus wait, rules of thumb that lenders are using to determine the lending limits, the potential impact of the recent settlement from the National Association of Realtors, and the current state of how student loan payments are being factored into the lending calculations. If you’re in the market to buy a home in 2024, we’ve got a good one for you this week. All right, let’s hear from today’s sponsor First Horizon, and then we’ll jump into the show.

Tim Ulbrich  00:48

 Does saving 20% for a down payment on a home feel like an uphill battle? It’s no secret that pharmacists have a lot of competing financial priorities, including high student loan debt, meaning that saving 20% for a down payment on a home may take years. For several years now we’ve been partnering with First Horizon who offers a professional home loan option AKA a doctor or pharmacist loan that requires a 3% downpayment for single family home or townhome for first time homebuyers, has no PMI and offers a 30 year fixed rate mortgage on home loans up to $766,550 in most areas. The pharmacist home loan is available in all states except Alaska and Hawaii, and can be used to purchase condos as well, however, rates may be higher and a condo review has to be completed. While I’ve personally worked with First Horizon before and had a great experience with Tony and his team, don’t just take it from me. Here’s what Payton from Tyler, Texas had to say about his experience with First Horizon: “Aaron, Cindy and Marilyn were very easy to work with. As a first- time homebuyer, I shopped around for lenders at the onset of the process. Aaron was always very quick to reply and provide me with any details I requested in order to move forward in my decision to select a lender. Once I selected First Horizon, Marilyn and Cindy did a great job of keeping my wife and I informed of the process. Closing was a breeze yesterday at the title office and I sincerely appreciate the team going above and beyond to keep my interest rate locked, despite extending closing due to negotiations with the seller. I’ve already shared my positive experience with many pharmacist-only groups. And I look forward to my brother, also a pharmacist, refinancing with you guys when he decides to do so. To check out the requirements for First Horizon’s pharmacists home loan and to start the pre- approval process, visit yourfinancialpharmacist.com/home-loan again, that’s yourfinancialpharmacist.com/home-loan. 

Tim Ulbrich  00:48

Tony, welcome back to the show.

Tony Umholtz  02:43

Hey, Tim, good to see you. Thanks for having me.

Tim Ulbrich  02:46

Always appreciate having your perspective and expertise to bring to our listeners that are potentially in the in the market for buying a house and we had you last on the podcast earlier in the spring episode 348. We discussed 2024 housing market trends. Today we’re going to continue that discussion knowing that this market is fluid, shifting, moving rapidly. And specifically we’re gonna talk about four timely questions that we think homebuyers must answer. But before we get into that, Tony, what’s the latest that you’re seeing in terms of trends out there in the market at the time of recording this end of May 2024? I know you mentioned to me before we hit record some interesting trends on inventory, maybe some levels building in certain markets, what would love to hear your perspective?

Tony Umholtz  03:30

Sure, sure. So times have changed a bit. If we look back from two years ago till now, you know, this these interest rates, the Fed has been on this mission to to quiet inflation, right? We gotta gotta get inflation down. It’s been a very tough environment for when it comes to inflation the last couple of years. And the good news is, is starting, we’re starting to see some things happen. And one thing that’s been building in different parts of the country now every part of the country can vary. But in Tampa Bay, for example, in Florida, we’ve seen a lot of inventory growth a lot of other parts of the country have too – Austin, Texas, I know is building inventory. So we’re seeing we’re seeing more inventory, more availability for buyers, that wasn’t there in the past. And I think, you know, that’s part of a normalization. We’re still not completely normal. But we are getting closer. So we’re getting closer.

Tim Ulbrich  04:25

Yeah, I feel it feels like there’s some slight shifts happening to be more buyer friendly. You know, we were just talking before the episode, you shared a story from your team of some negotiations happening where, you know, there were some concessions and things from a seller that maybe we wouldn’t have saw, you know, six months ago or 12 months ago and again, to your point every market is different. We need more inventory here in Columbus, Ohio for sure, there’s a lot of demand so everyone’s market is different, but it does feel like we’re starting to see some shifts where you know the the markets becoming a little bit more friendly to the buyer. I know for those that are searching, it probably does not feel like that right now. But, you know, be patient and we’re obviously anxiously waiting to see what happens with interest rates as well.

Tony Umholtz  05:08

Yes, I’m definitely seeing a shift, it’s becoming much more of a buyers market. Repairs are being, you know, concessions are being made or, you know, like we had talked about the sellers are willing to do some of this work to the home where they weren’t before when, when these inspections come back, and there’s little things, they’re willing to make those those those repairs now where they weren’t in the past. So some definitely some positive trends for buyers.

Tim Ulbrich  05:34

So again, we’re gonna talk through four timely questions that homebuyers must answer. Again, we’re recording here at the end of May 2024. So Tony, question number one, I think one that many people are waiting and thinking about is, you know, should I buy now? Should I wait until interest rates drop? We discussed that in a previous episode. I think this provides an interesting question because supply and demand, when rates come down, in theory, when I’m more people that are into the market searching for home, we did see rates tick down a little bit here in the last week. So what what are your thoughts on some of the trends that are happening around interest rates? And this decision of hey, buy now versus wait?

Tony Umholtz  06:11

Yeah, there’s a lot that goes into that, Tim, is a great, great question. I think, you know, the first thing we would want to talk about is, everyone’s situation is different, right? I’ve always believed in 22 years in this industry, like if someone’s going to be in an area for five years or more, when you look at the alternative, renting, right, versus owning, I think it makes sense to own if you’re in a five year span, no matter what the environment, right? I think it because it just rents go up over time, right? You don’t build equity, even if value stayed the same, you’re going to come out ahead and five years if values are zero, right? Zero appreciation, right? So you’re going to benefit by by owning that home, even if there’s no appreciation. So I think that’d be the first thing I’d say, like it’s up to the individual. But if you’re renting and that’s the alternative, and you’re gonna see escalating rents, because rents are still going up every year, I think, I think owning is the way to go. As far as like timing the market, which is always hard to do, there’s pros and cons right now. I think inventory is building is becoming more favorable, like we discussed, interest rates have come down slightly, you know, with interest rates, I’ll give you give you guys my thoughts on this. And again, I you know, this is just all these multiple sources that I monitor. And, and, you know, there’s some, there’s a couple of different thoughts here. So number one, we’re starting to see different consumers, different spectrums really being affected. Those in the lower income earners, it’s really starting to, you’re seeing credit card debt multiply, interest rates on credit card debt has gone up, there’s a segment of the population that’s really struggling, really struggling financially. We’re starting to see more defaults on car payments, not as much on mortgages, but on car payments, we are in some other different retail items. So that tells you that that could drag on the economy. So that’s one end of the spectrum. The other the other end of the spectrum is, we have a lot of people like baby boomers, for example, no debt, right. So they’re not dealing with any credit cards, their incomes slightly rising. We have financial markets have gone up. Stock bond market has risen. We’ve got high yields on CDs and treasury bonds. So they’re able to spend and they’re spending a lot, right. So we’ve got one segment of population doing really well and another not. So it’s just how long is that going to drag on the economy, and we’re seeing businesses start pulling back a little bit. So that being said, that’s all things that line up with interest rates falling, it really does, because we are seeing this gradual slowdown. Rates came down the past two weeks, because we got some got a really pretty bad number on retail sales. And those things kind of are showing the slowdown. That being said, commodity prices are going up. And what does that tell us, Tim? That tells us that that’s an inflationary sign, right? So it’s a mixed bag right now, it’s hard to say rates are gonna go straight down. It’s really tough. So I wouldn’t say we can’t completely bank on lower rates. We definitely are slowing and there’s probably an outlook that rates could be lower in the future. But we don’t always know for sure, right? There is some signal saying higher rates could be, this could be the new normal for a while. So when we’re making a home buying decision, we wouldn’t want to just say hey, rates are going to be lower in a year. That’s my buying. It’s got to say does this fit my lifestyle now? Is my alternative renting, you know, if I’m living rent free with family, and it’s not a problem to be in the you know, living with family, might be okay, but if you’re renting, and you know, you’re going to be in that area for more than five years, that’s where I think buying makes sense no matter what the market is.

Tim Ulbrich  09:55

Yeah, I’m glad you said that, Tony, because I feel like when there’s so much news coming at us as there has been with market conditions rates, will they drop? When will they drop inflation, etc, we tend to run the risk of getting down these rabbit holes that drive our decision making. And they’re important information we’ve got to consider. But we got to step back and look at the bigger picture. Where does the home purchase fit within the context of the rest of the financial plan? And if we think about this as a decision tree, from there, yes or no? Okay, how are the market conditions impacting our ability to buy a home? And what does that do in terms of purchase price, financing options, all those things, and sometimes we work bottom up, when we really need to start with those bigger questions.

Tony Umholtz  10:37

I have one more thing I’ll add just it just kind of piggyback’s on Warren Buffett, right. And, you know, you want to go against the grain on investments and in life. And a lot of ways, you know, he I think is his quote was, “I buy when there’s blood in the streets,” is when he buys stocks, right? When things were really bad. And, you know, when there’s euphoria he sells. So you kind of look at the housing market, and I’ve looked at that over the years, and maybe outside of COVID, just just what happened in COVID. It’s always kind of been when the markets down, it’s kind of a down year, I think it’s always been a better time to buy historically, in real estate too you know, when everyone’s buying, then you’re competing with everyone is just don’t get as good of a deal. So I just kind of looked at that in my own life, when I buy it seems like when things were slower in the market, I always did better, you know, versus when everyone’s looking.

Tim Ulbrich  11:32

Yeah, and I have a feeling time will tell, but I have a feeling. you know, maybe this time next year, maybe sooner, maybe a little bit later, we’re you and I are gonna be talking about, you know, an important topic around refinancing that we haven’t talked about in a long time on the show, because it just hasn’t made a whole lot of sense. So you know, what more to come in in the future. But if obviously, if we see rates drop, there’s going to be a big interest in the market out there from from a refinance perspective. Great stuff. Okay. So that was the first question, is it worth waiting to buy until interest rates drop? So by now versus wait? Second question is around some of the rules of thumb that lenders are using from a pre approval process and determining the amount of home that one can afford, one can purchase and Tony just given the rise in home prices, given the rise in interest rates, obviously driving up monthly payments, you know, pharmacist incomes have gone up, but they haven’t gone up that much. And so I have a feeling that, you know, we’re seeing the impact of home prices, and interest rates have an impact on their debt to income ratios, which are important from a lending perspective. So what are the rules of thumb? Is the 28-36 rule still relevant? What are lenders using now?

Tony Umholtz  12:41

You know, it’s it is irrelevant to some degree. But actually, the back end ratio, the 36%, is actually 43%. So, it depends on the product too. So like the product, you know, with less than 20% down, you’re typically going to have to stay at that 43% threshold. So that means your total debts, new mortgage included, car payments, student loans, the total debts cannot be more than 43% of your gross income. So it’s important remember, it’s gross income, it’s not net income, okay. So if you’re earnings of $10,000 a month, gross, your total obligations per month can be $4300. Okay, simple, simple math there. Now, if you’re going to bring more money to the table, like 20%, down, you can often get approved higher, so up to 49%, maybe even 50% in some cases. FHA loans, we can get even higher, sometimes it’s interesting. So, but those are different LTVs, typically more larger down payments are gonna give you more flexibility on the on the debt to income ratio. And that’s what again, that’s what we are approving you for as a lender and it with the lending community can approve you for that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s the right thing for me.

Tim Ulbrich  13:56

Yeah, great, great point. And so we’ve seen that kind of bump up in over time. And again, to your point, every product is different. So so no general rule of thumb. But the example there’s a good one, right? Remember, it’s gross income. So if someone’s earning $10,000 per year, you mentioned that that 36, shifting to 43. So that would be all debts $4300, right or less of the 10,000. Now, just to add on to that a little bit in this market, Tony and I’m specifically thinking of existing homeowners that are looking to move or make a purchase that are trying to get themselves in a position where maybe they don’t have to make a contingent offer, right? So hey, can I get a second loan, you know, even if they’re not going to carry that loan for a long period of time, but wanting to be able to make an offer on a home without a contingency on the sale of their current home. Just talk to us about how that impacts in that point, you then would have two mortgages, right that are going into that 43% equation.

Tony Umholtz  14:48

That’s right. So any liabilities you add, so like for example, what’s popular is a home equity line of credit. If you still own your home and you’re trying to buy a new home without selling your current home. Well, that home equity line of credit has to be counted in your debt to income ratio going forward. And it’s a popular strategy. It’s almost like a bridge loan. We have some clients that are trying to do a few repairs to their home, but want to buy this other house. And they they need to bridge that equity over for the down payment. Now, that new home equity line, for example, would count in their debt to income ratio or cash out refinance. We do cash out refinances as well, where because those rates are lower than home equity lines generally. And let’s say we pull $100,000 out that new mortgage payment would be calculated, and your debt to income ratio, so any new loans you take are calculated, and your debt to income ratio.

Tim Ulbrich  15:39

Awesome. Great stuff there. So third question, I want to talk a little bit about maybe somewhat nebulous, NAR settlement and what’s going on there, and probably more questions, and maybe we have answers at this point in time. And we had Nate Hedrick on the show early in April. Nate’s a pharmacist, real estate agent, Episode 353, we’ll link to that in the show notes, to talk about his perspective as an agent on the NAR settlement. So we don’t necessarily need to go into all of the details on the settlement, as we’ve discussed that before. But Tony would love to get your perspective as a mortgage officer, what what exactly is going on here with the settlement? And how may this impact or not impact those that are currently or soon to be in the market as a homebuyer? 

Tony Umholtz  16:22

It’s, you know, it’s a moving target to some degree. It’s, you know, from, from our perspective, as lenders, I know, any other thing I just like to address -we don’t know all the details yet. And I think we have to look at the different regional MLS’s too. I think there could be some regional impacts and ways of doing business that could could change, it may not be a universal thing is what I’m saying. Different areas may adopt different rules. But just in my communications with with real estate agents that we’ve worked with. And, you know, clearly the big thing is going to be, I think it’s going to narrow the amount of realtors that are out there. I think to some degree, I think the more established agents will be still be in the markets and still do well and probably will do better. For a lot of the newer agents that may not have as big of a following or book business may not make it, right. My concern too, is there are going to be some areas where the buyers may not be able to afford to pay the buyer’s agents. So I think I think what it’s going to do is it’s going to professionalize a lot of things. I think, buyers. First of all, I want to say this, I’ve worked with real estate agents for over 20 years. And they some of them work extremely hard. It’s a very tough occupation, when you talk about driving people to maybe 20 houses, negotiations. I mean, even this weekend, I had an agent call us and they were making an offer on a really competitive house, this one was priced really well to sell. And like, you know, they’re still going up against multiple offers, they’ve been working with these buyers for months. I mean, it’s it’s a challenging occupation. And this doesn’t make it any easier to some degree. But I think having a buyer’s agreement with that agent, so when you select an agent that can help you, because there’s a lot of value add that agents bring, you know, just in my view, we all have the internet, we all can search for properties. But when we’re new to an area, we don’t know everything about the neighborhoods, we don’t know the history of the neighborhoods, the history of that area. Was it built on an old Waste Management facility? I mean, there’s so much that goes into this, what kind of schools are here? What’s the history of these schools? What’s, what’s the history of this part of town? Is this area going to appreciate? Is it a growing part of town? Or is it a time, there’s so many aspects that agents do bring value? So I think, getting off on a tangent, but I guess what I’m getting at here is you want people to be served have the ability to be served by agents, right. And you don’t want to eliminate that. So they’re all going to have to sign some sort of buyer’s agreement. And there will be a commission involved. And that commission will either be paid by the buyer themselves directly or could still be negotiated with the seller. And I do think especially as we pivot into this buyer’s market, that more sellers are going to be willing to pay that. And it may not be advertised that way. But I think they’re going to be able to negotiate that in so the sellers, essentially still paying it. Yeah, but if the buyer does pay it out of their pocket, they’re probably still getting a little lower sales price. So in the end, I think the consumer is going to do fine, but it’s really not going to change a whole lot. I think it’s going to change how the business is done. And it may eliminate some of the agents in the industry is what I think could happen. The good news of all this is that Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, right and HUD, basically came out said that if the seller does pay the buyer’s agent commission, it’s not going to impact the allowance for seller concessions. That means is on a on a conventional loan, if you’re putting 5% down and you can normally get 3% in sales concessions, right? That let’s say the buyer agents owed 3% in commission, the seller can still pay that and still pay your 3% concessions, closing costs and prepaids, which was is helpful, I think is a big deal. Because then we’re not having that challenge as well, buyers, because many people take advantage of that, to have their closing costs and prepaids paid. So that’s, that’s kind of where we are, I think we’ll know more by the end of the summer, and we can definitely dive in more. And that’s just kind of my high level, you know, perspective. I’m not an expert in this. But just, you know, that’s kind of what I think could happen. And I’m hopeful that this is a good thing for the industry. And it’s not not a negative thing.

Tim Ulbrich  20:45

Yeah, great summary. And I’m just really curious more than anything to see how this shakes out. You know, if you look at listings right now, it’s business as usual. You know, most listings that I see are in the Columbus area, you know, a list of 3%, two and a half percent, something like that. So that ability to list is something I think we’re going to see that change, and there certainly will be questions and some unknown territory, but how quickly will this evolve? How quickly will the disruption happen? Or not happen? You and I were talking a little bit before the recording about, you know, some of this shifting more on the front end. And having that agreement agreement with the buyer’s agent, especially for the first time homebuyers where that downpayment and coming with cash to the table for down payment closing costs, is so precious, right, that’s hard, hard to do. If there’s more cash that’s needed, from the buyer to pay the agent in a market or historically where that wasn’t happening,  you know, I think that’s going to be an interesting trend to watch watch into the future. But what a lot of questions, you know, I think the example you gave is, was a really good one, have you know, an agent, understanding a local area, understanding the school’s understanding, maybe some of the things that aren’t going to be put on a listing, you know, such as, hey, this was built on an old facility and just going through this process a couple of times, especially if you’re coming from out of the area until you are in the area, living in it every day, where you are actually driving around experiencing it, living life like you normally would, you just can’t know that. You have to rely on, you know, other people that have expertise in the area. But I think it’s also worth saying there that not all agents are created equal from a value standpoint, you know. It’s no different than our industry, in the financial services, where the word financial planner doesn’t necessarily carry a whole lot of weight. As a consumer, you have to really do your homework to say, Hey, what are the credentials this person has? What is the experience? What is the value that they’re charging? Is there a return on investment? And I think, you know, one of the positives of this is really shifting, you know, that pressure, maybe some consolidation in the agent market, to really, you know, for agents to make that case, from a value standpoint. So curious to see what that looks like. Yeah,

Tony Umholtz  22:49

100% agree. It’s, it should professionalize a lot of the industry in a lot of ways.

Tim Ulbrich  22:57

My last question for you, Tony, I know a lot of our listeners are curious about this is related to student loans. You know, it’s it feels like we have to come back and talk about student loans at some point on every episode. Many of our listeners, of course, are facing, you know, significant amounts of student loan debt, especially, especially in that first decade or so of their career. And there’s just changes upon changes related to student loans that have been coming over the last year. And what one of them that’s coming to top of mind for me is with the with the new save repayment plan, that new calculation is going into effect this summer, which is going to have some benefits for most, not all because what’s interesting about that repayment plan is the monthly payment can exceed the standard repayment plan, which isn’t true with all of the other income driven repayment plans. But for most borrowers, I think because of the adjustments to that calculation, where the federal poverty limit multipliers going to be going up, and then the multiplier for graduate undergraduate loans might drive down the monthly payment a little bit as well. In theory, we’re gonna see many people that might have a lower monthly payment on that save plan. And so my question is, we just talked about debt to income ratio, how does that feed into what you’re seeing in terms of how lenders are looking at student loans and just the nuances and how quickly this is changing? And how that feeds into the calculation of what that amount of student loans impacts their overall debt load?

Tony Umholtz  24:27

Yeah, that’s a great question. And it’s, you know, as far as how lenders are viewing the student loans, there’s two two things that I would say are the main factors that we look at, right. So the so when, when a pharmacist or physician is getting out of school, they secure the first job and they have quite a bit of student loans. We see cases you know, across the board but hundreds to hundreds of 1000s of dollars sometimes the the there’s two ways and the main the the way, the best way and what we see the most is we just use the Income Based Repayment repayment number, right? So, a lot of times when we’ll run a credit report for someone that’s newly out of school, it’ll state that they owe all this balance, and there’s a zero payment, right? So because they haven’t started making payments, so when we run a credit bureau through Equifax, TransUnion, and Experian, it’ll come back that way, right, to saying zero is the payment amount. So that’s where these two different avenues go. So number one, if you get the Income Based Payment letter, so let’s say it’s $250,000, is still student loans. And that comes back at $800 a month income based repayment, or $500 a month, that’s what we’re going to use. So it’d be $500 a month on that letter, even though it’s not on the credit bureau. Now, if it’s in deferment, or you’re not repaying it right, then we’re going to use a factor. So in case the product we use for pharmacists is going to be a point 5% factor, okay. So in that case, you’d be looking at a $1250 payment versus $500. So $1250, because it’s half a percent per month, of the total $250. So your your ability, your buying capacity has narrowed if you don’t have that income based repayment. So because that factor is going to is going to provide a larger payment than then the income base. Now, that being said, that factors lower than like an FHA loan, or you know, some other products that are out there, we’re gonna use 1%. Right? Yeah. So so it’s still better than, you know, the other options, but it’s not as good as the income based. So my advice is, once you start working, and you’re on that payment plan, that’s what the lender is going to use, and make sure that they have that information that way they calculate it correctly, because the lenders may turn you down saying, Hey, you owe 250, saying zero, our factor’s 1%, it’s $2500 a month, you can’t qualify for anything. Yeah. So that’s the advice I’d give. I’ve seen that happen quite a bit over the years. So I just, you know, do your homework on what that that income base payment will be. And if it’s better than that factor, which a lot of times it is, that’s what I would, you know, use that to factor into your planning ahead of time.

Tim Ulbrich  27:18

Yeah, Tony, this is a great example, one of many where two parts of the financial plan come together, you know, we’re talking about student loan repayment. And obviously, there’s a whole set of strategy with that. And from a lending perspective, you’re buying a home, what that monthly payment is, and how that feeds into your debt to income ratio very relevant. And one of the common things we talked about is, you know, deferment. In my opinion deferment, there’s still some old advice out there from people that graduated back when I did have like, hey, defer your loans if you can defer your loans, especially during like a postgraduate training period. And the problem with that you’ve highlighted one here, is that for those individuals, that’s going to put us into that, you know, more of that de facto calculation, that most likely is going to be a higher number that contribute to the debt load. The other thing we often talk about is, especially for those that might qualify for something like public service loan forgiveness, deferment, doesn’t allow those to count as qualifying payments. And because the income driven repayment, as the name suggests, is using your income to come up with your monthly payment, even when you’re in a postgraduate training period with a thought might be, hey, I’ve got a lower income, therefore, I need to defer, that calculation might end up, you know, even if you have 150 $250,000, that you might actually have a very low monthly income driven repayment plan, which would be favorable here, but also be favorable, when it comes to something like loan forgiveness payments and those payments counting. So not advice, by any means. But certainly something to think about. And a good example, just have a how these pieces are very much interconnected.

Tony Umholtz  28:48

Absolutely.

Tim Ulbrich  28:49

Tony, if I could put you if I could put a fifth question in front of you, that actually was just thinking about as we’re recording, you know, knowing we’re in this higher interest rate market, I would suspect this is a time period where we’re seeing more ARM products out there that are being promoted. So ARMs, adjustable rate mortgage products, what what are your thoughts and kind of, you know, people looking at those where hey, maybe an ARM product as you’ve been promoted, you know, something, and if something like a 10 or 15 year ARM, even if it’s ammoritized over 30 years with the idea that hey, we’re gonna save a little bit of interest now, but there’s this question in the future. So, you know, when I refinance my home last in 2000, and somewhere around the pandemic, you know, 30 year conventional at high twos, low threes to no brainer, right? Obviously, we’re in a different interest rate market. So just quick thoughts on on kind of ARM products in this market.

Tony Umholtz  29:43

You know, it’s funny, the ARM products, especially right when the Fed took off with their interest rate, rising raises and ARMs had a pretty meaningful spread below the fixed rates. So the only area I see and I’ll give you the pros and cons of ARMs, the only area where I’m writing a good amount of arms are on jumbo mortgages right now, just because those jumbo fixed rates are still higher, more elevated than the ARMs, and it but it’s, it’s compressed a lot. So it used to be like a 1% spread maybe in early, mid 22 and an end of 22-23. It just kept doing this, you know why? Because the Fed kept increasing the short end of the yield curve, right. So that’s where we had this. That’s why we have an inverted yield curve. So what you don’t want to get into too much technicality, but like the two year treasury note today is actually higher than the 10 year and a 30. Year, right. So it’s inverted, short term rates are, are higher than the long term rates, which typically leads means rates are going to come down in the future, right? is typically what that means. But ARMs still makes sense on the higher end loans it possibly could on conventional loans, the only challenges with ARMs, they typically are considered riskier in the eyes of the lender, meaning we want more money down, right. We’re not going to do a three or 5%. The only product we have one product that’ll do 100% ARM for MDs only, MDs and DOs. But outside of that none of the products really make sense unless you put 20% down, so no one has 20% to put down the ARM could make sense. It used to make even more sense. But the yield curve has gotten pumped up so much. And frankly, the fixed rates have come down. The 30 year fixed is getting better on especially on conventional loans. FHA loans are incredibly – the spread on FHA loans are way down. I mean, I think the other day, I mean, I hadn’t seen them down in, you know, pretty far down in the sixes for FHA now, so there is PMI. But anyway, I guess what I’m getting at is, I think there’s better fixed rate options for most people right now, unless they’re higher end loans if that makes sense, but it’s a great question. The ARMs are definitely still viable for larger jumbo loans. And in most markets, that’s over $766. 

Tim Ulbrich  32:09

So you answered my question, I say, hey, what do you define as a jumbo loan for folks that are listening, wondering, so awesome, thank you. Let’s wrap up by talking about the product that you offer at First Horizon for the pharmacist home loan. You know, I think many of our listeners we’ve talked about, hey, some of the challenges potentially of getting into that downpayment, obviously that downpayment amount of getting a conventional 20%, where home prices are today versus five years ago, that’s put further pressure on that, you know, cash for the downpayment. So talk to us about the pharmacist, pharmacist home loan through First Horizon, who it’s for maximum loan amounts, downpayment requirements, and that will point our listeners to more information from there.

Tony Umholtz  32:47

Sure, sure. So the again, the product has been it been a great option for many, and we’ve been really neat to see so many people benefit from it. And it allows if you’re a first time buyer, you can put as little as 3% down. And if you’ve purchased in the past, then or owned a home in the past, it would be 5% down, okay. No PMI. So there’s no mortgage insurance, that’s the real benefit. There’s no prepayment penalty either. So you can refinance in the next couple of years if we see rates dip, like we think could happen. There’s also a minimum credit score, it’s 700 to the minimum credit score hurdle is 700. And the maximum loan amount is $766,500. Is the maximum loan amount. So that’s a quick snapshot of it. And there’s not a hefty amount of reserve requirements. It’s a pretty user friendly loan for most, especially if you’re buying your first home. And we generally have, you know, 30 year fixed options under that product. 

Tim Ulbrich  33:53

So for those that are listening, that are in a higher cost of living area, saying, Hey, I’d love to buy under $766. But I live on the West Coast, I live in the northeast, I live in, you know, the DC/Virginia area, you know, this doesn’t mean there’s not an opportunity to work with First Horizon, Tony mentioned the jumbo loans or other options available when you get to those higher loan amounts. And I think Tony’s we’ve talked about on previous shows a good lender is not going to put one solution towards everyone to take. For your individual solution, what is the best option? Is it the pharmacy some loan? Is it a FHA loan, you know, perhaps a VA loan or other products? So that lender relationship and really determining what the best fit is so important, and we’ve got more information available on the website. If you go to yourfinancialpharmacists.com/home-loan, you can learn more about the first horizon pharmacists home loan product, and from there, we can get you in contact with Tony and the team to learn more. So Tony, as always great stuff. Thanks so much for coming on the show. 

Tony Umholtz  34:50

Hey, thanks for having me. Tim. Always great to be with you here.

Tim Ulbrich  34:52

Thank you. Have a good one.

Tony Umholtz  34:53

You too.

Tim Ulbrich  34:56

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

Tim Ulbrich  35:41

As we conclude this week’s podcast and important reminder that the content on this show is provided to you for informational purposes only and is not intended to provide and should not be relied on for investment or any other advice. Information in the podcast and corresponding material should not be construed as a solicitation or offer to buy or sell any investment or related financial products. We urge listeners to consult with a financial advisor with respect to any investment. Furthermore, the information contained in our archived newsletters, blog posts and podcasts is not updated and may not be accurate at the time you listen to it on the podcast. Opinions and analyses expressed herein are solely those of your financial pharmacists unless otherwise noted, and constitute judgments as of the dates published. Such information may contain forward looking statements, which are not intended to be guarantees of future events. Actual results could differ materially from those anticipated in the forward-looking statements. For more information, please visit yourfinancialpharmacist.com/disclaimer. Thank you again for your support of the Your Financial Pharmacist podcast. Have a great rest of your week.

 

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YFP 360: Starting a Nonprofit: An Interview w/ Brentsen Wolf, PharmD Founder of RxTeach


Brentsen Wolf, PharmD, Founder and President of the nonprofit RxTeach, shares his journey of starting and leading a nonprofit organization.

Episode Summary

On this episode, Tim Ulbrich connects with industry pharmacist Brentsen Wolf, PharmD about his journey starting RxTeach, a nonprofit organization dedicated to providing scholarships in the areas of advancing preventative medicine education and cancer research. Brentsen discusses the motivations behind starting RxTeach, how he was able to go from idea to getting it off the ground and shares the lessons he learned along the way. He also discusses his thoughts on the future of the organization and the efforts RxTeach is supporting.

About Today’s Guest

Brentsen Wolf graduated with his PharmD from the Southern Illinois University of Edwardsville in 2021. He then completed a 2-year post-doctoral medical affairs fellowship through the Rutgers Pharmaceutical Industry Fellowship Program at Merck. Brentsen currently works as an MSL in thoracic malignancies in the pharmaceutical industry.

Brentsen is the President and Founder of RxTeach, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization dedicated to providing scholarships in the areas of advancing preventative medicine education and cancer research. Brentsen has a passion for health and fitness, professional development, and research. You can connect with him via LinkedIn and read all of his articles here.

Key Points from the Episode

  • Pharmacist’s career journey and nonprofit work. [0:00]
  • Nonprofit organization RX Teach, providing educational content for pharmacists and students. [4:32]
  • Preventative medicine and cancer treatment. [9:07]
  • Nonprofit efforts to create educational content and raise funds for scholarships. [13:23]
  • Brentsen Wolf avoids burnout by making nonprofit effort [14:45]
  • Nonprofit formation and legal requirements. [19:48]
  • Nonprofit organization’s mission to provide scholarships for pharmacy students and prevent cancer through education. [24:33]

Episode Highlights

“Starting the non-profit was based on passion. And I think if you can articulate well for yourself, what is actually going to drive you and prevent you from burning out. That’s how you make this decision.” – Brentsen Wolf, PharmD [14:48]

“If you’re thinking about doing something, whether it’s a nonprofit, for profit, blog, side project, whatever it is, there’s never going to be a perfect time.” – Brentsen Wolf, PharmD [20:51]

“I hear all the time, like, oh, once I get X number of dollars in the bank, or once I get to this place in my career, that’s when I’ll do this. And I can tell you, you know, ever since having my first child, you just, there’s no perfect time. It’s always going to be hard in some fashion, there’s always going to be some kinds of challenges, and you’re going to meet those along the way and overcome them and feel good about that.” – Brentsen Wolf, PharmD [20:59]

“So stop waiting is my first piece of advice, just take the first step. And if it goes slowly, if it takes a long time, or it’s really difficult upfront, that’s fine, it was never going to be super easy.” – Brentsen Wolf, PharmD [21:19]

Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode

Episode Transcript

Tim Ulbrich  00:00

Hey everybody, Tim Ulbrich here and thank you for listening to the YFP Podcast where each week we strive to inspire and encourage you on your path towards achieving financial freedom. This week I had the pleasure of sitting down with industry pharmacist Brentsen Wolf about his journey, starting the nonprofit, Rx Teach. We discussed the motivations behind starting Rx Teach how he was able to go from idea to getting off the ground, the lessons he learned along the way, the future of the organization and the efforts that Rx Teach is supporting. Now, before we jump into my interview with Brentsen, I have a hard truth for you to hear: making a six figure income is not a financial plan. Yes, you’ve worked hard to get where you are today. Yes, you’re earning a good income. But have you ever wondered, am I on track to retire? How do I prioritize and fund all the competing financial goals that I have? How do I plan financially for big upcoming life events and changes like moving having a child, changing jobs, getting married or retiring? And why perhaps am I not as far along financially at this point in my career, as I thought I would be? One of the answers may be that your six figure income is not a financial plan. As a pharmacist, yes, you have an incredible tool in your toolbox – your salary. But without a vision and a plan that good income will only go so far. That’s in part why we started Your Financial Pharmacist back in 2015. At YFP, we support pharmacists at every stage of their careers to take control their finances reach their financial goals and build wealth through comprehensive, fee-only financial planning and tax planning. Our team of certified financial planners and tax professionals work with pharmacists all across the United States, and helps our clients set their future selves up for success while living a rich life today. If you’re ready to see how Your Financial Pharmacist can support you on your financial journey, you can visit yourfinancialpharmacist.com/learn to learn more about our services. Again, that’s yourfinancialpharmacist.com/learn. Alright, let’s jump into my interview with Brentsen Wolf, founder of Rx Teach. 

Tim Ulbrich  02:06

Brentsen, welcome to the show.

Brentsen Wolf  02:08

Thank you, Tim. Thank you. 

Tim Ulbrich  02:09

Well it’s been a treat for me, you and I connected a couple years back when you were doing your industry fellowship with Merck through the Rutgers program. And we collaborated on some personal finance sessions with the fellows which we’ve done now for a few years, which has been a lot a lot of fun and it’s been a joy. And before we get into the work that you’ve been doing with the nonprofit Rx Teach, and we’re excited to share more of that story and the journey that led to that work and the impact that you’re having. Tell us more about your career story in pharmacy, what led you into the profession? What led to the interest in industry and the work that you’re doing now?

Brentsen Wolf  02:43

Yeah, it’s a good question. Especially because coming from the Midwest, and I know we’re both Midwest guys, the kind of interesting opportunities for PharmDs outside of retail and hospital aren’t thrown at you in school the way they are in some of the coastal areas. So yeah, my, my journey to where I’m at now is, you know, convoluted and stressful in some ways, but also just, you know, I think I ended up where I needed to be. So I graduated from Southern Illinois University, Edwardsville in 2021. And like I said, Midwest thought retail, or inpatient pharmacy, I worked in both of those areas, and, you know, during school and just wasn’t sure that it was really for me. I learned in probably my P3 year that these fellowships existed. And I was glad to connect with you at some point to bring you into those folds. Because I know the fellows don’t know anything about personal finance. I certainly didn’t. So those are very helpful sessions. I’m glad we collaborated in that way. But yeah, I ended up at Merck, doing a medical affairs fellowship, and mostly solid tumors, the little bit of work in infectious diseases as well, and just absolutely loved it. I knew I found what I was looking for in a career, it actually drew me in. I was very passionate about all of the work I was doing. So I actually transitioned after fellowship over to AstraZeneca, which is where I’m at now working in thoracic malignancies as a medical science liaison, which again, couldn’t be happier. I’m back where I grew up, surrounded by family. I’ve got a one year old daughter now. So that part’s important. It’s cheaper living here than New York City where some of my colleagues live. So yeah, couldn’t couldn’t complain. And that’s kind of how I ended up where I am now. Hey,

 

Tim Ulbrich  04:24

You’ve got the sought after sweet gig, working in an industry position, but living in an affordable cost of living area. We work with a lot of industry pharmacists that make a great income, certainly, but often cost of living is a challenging part of the plan. So you’re certainly happy for you and where that career has progressed. Let’s talk about the nonprofit organization that you started RX Teach. And tell us about what exactly is Rx Teach and ultimately, how did it come to be? How did it get started? 

Brentsen Wolf  04:57

Rx Teach was a brainchild I had during fellowship, and for whatever reason, I thought I had enough free time to start this thing. So if that tells you anything about work life balance as a fellow versus maybe a resident, that might be a bit insightful. So I ended up, you know, just saying, screw it, I just want to do something. I wanted my own platform, I wanted to be able to say and talk about things that were important to me. And so I started this website. And honestly, the thought of it becoming a nonprofit organization was in my head, but was I was too busy. I didn’t know what I was doing. You know, it was it was down the line. So really, it started off almost like a blog, right? Just kind of writing member that I care about. I think you were one of the first people I talked to about it. So we really focused on a couple of different areas as a nonprofit, the two main ones that were preventative medicine, education. And the second one is cancer, essentially, broadly speaking. So we write a lot about those topics. But we also write about pretty much you know, across the board, anything that could contribute to pharmacists, or really any health care professions understanding of a certain topic. So we’ll do journal clubs, lifestyle management stuff. And we do all of that via essentially a weekly email, sometimes more than weekly. We’ve gathered a following and a community now that we’re very proud of. And like I said, we don’t keep a cent of anything, to be honest with you, it all gets donated. And that’s because our Rx Teach at its core, is still just a passion project and a hobby for the board, all the board members. You know, we we keep it very balanced. It’s in terms of work life balance. The second this feels like a job, we won’t do it. But you know, we’re very passionate about these topics. And so it’s been very easy for us to maintain this kind of work life balance with Rx Teach and still be able to provide scholarships and funds to students in the local communities like we’ve always sought after so.

Tim Ulbrich  06:58

So the website will link to this in the show notes, rxteach.com. So our listeners can check it out as well. Brenton, you mentioned we when you talked about some of the content, the articles is that you and the board? Are there other people that are contributing? Tell us about what that model looks like. I know content creation can be a labor of love. So I’m curious to hear more.

Tim Ulbrich  07:16

You know, it’s funny, you mentioned that. I was just thinking about this. I’m listening to a six part podcast series, one of my favorite shows the Huberman Lab podcast. And he did a six part series, his content is just fantastic. But he did a six part series on sleep with Matthew Walker, and it was one of the things I’m listening to and it’s like, Okay, think of all the things we learned about in pharmacy school about prescribing sleep medications and mechanism of action. Is this going to help, you know, latency and onset and people falling asleep versus, etc. We know nothing about, like prevention to the actual, like mechanics of sleep and is like, yes, yes. What you’re saying so true. Right. It’s, it’s that you know, we have such a strong focus, obviously, on the treatment, makes sense for pharmacists, but, you know, it’s like wow, the preventative aspect. And all in I remember even learning some of those things where it’s like sleep hygiene and, you know, self care, and we’re like, yeah, yeah, yeah, like maybe there’ll be a question there. Right. But what do I need to know about the drugs? Right?

Brentsen Wolf  07:16

Yeah, it’s definitely a it is a big week. So I frequently write for the website and my co-founder Kristin Lindauer, who’s a PGY1 trained pharmacist and is now an HIV ambulatory care pharmacist over in Virginia, also frequently writes. But we highlight student work constantly, it was one of the things that was important to us, because I didn’t think I had opportunities to really showcase my work or understanding or maybe some niche topics that I cared about as a student. So now we have students write for us all the time, you can go look at the website and see who has done that in the past. Oftentimes, if they write for us once they write for us, again, because it’s a decent experience. So students write for us, we also get other residents writing pharmacy residents, current fellows will right health care providers in any field. So we have Day in the Life series of like a veterinarian pharmacist, a retail pharmacist, and oncology pharmacist, etc. So we really highlight the full gambit. But we like I said, we do have particular interests in preventative medicine, and cancer, just because that’s where all of our money goes to. So content on that is obviously a big part of it. So for instance, we have a whole series on how to prescribe exercise, which I think is a big you don’t get that in pharmacy school now, right? Not to get on my soapbox, but honestly, like if a patient were to ask any given pharmacist or physician, like hey, I want to prevent cardiovascular disease, how do I do that? You’re not going to get a very in depth answer. Generally, you’re gonna get 30 minutes, five times a week of moderate intensity exercise. And that’s just to me not a good enough response. Right. And that’s the purpose of this whole thing, is how do we hash that out and really educate people on how would you respond to that patient in a way that I think is sufficient? And I do say I, it’s subjective term, but that’s the point of the organization.

Brentsen Wolf  10:05

Yeah, I totally agree. And I don’t think the healthcare system is even currently set up to understand the impact that, you know, preventative education could even bring, which is why we’re so interested. It’s a huge gap, huge gap. And it’s not just pharmacists. I want to say that. 

Tim Ulbrich  10:21

That’s right. That’s right. 

Brentsen Wolf  10:22

It’s physicians, nurses, PAs, whatever, you’re not learning this in school. So really, people have to self educate at this point, which is a bummer. But we hope to help make that easier for those people. 

Tim Ulbrich  10:34

What is the passion behind the preventative medicine, the cancer focus? Those are really the two pillars that I’m hearing you share about? Where does that passion? Where does that interest come from?

Brentsen Wolf  10:43

Yeah, so I mean, for me, and you seem like a fit guy. I’ve always been in exercise and lifestyle management. And Kristin Lindauer, also has been too. She’s a I mean, she’s in better shape than me in certain ways. She just ran a marathon in three hours and 27 minutes!

Tim Ulbrich  10:59

No way! 

Brentsen Wolf  11:00

She’s a superstar. Yeah, I mean, I hope to get that fast eventually. But, you know, fitness has always been something that we have been passionate about and have felt, at least anecdotally, for ourselves, the incredible benefits. And then all of a sudden, you know, you start seeing these publications around longevity and what contributes, what contributes to it. So anything from how a VO2 Max can predict your overall survival over a 10 year period, and how grip strength is associated with preventing hip fractures in the elderly. And all of these things start to stack on top of each other and really paint the picture of how important fitness lifestyle management is to preventing disease. And so it’s an area where I can easily nerd out in and you know, just dive very deep into the data. And I write about it frequently. So it was an obvious pillar. And plus, I had identified it as unmet need. I really think we need more of this information out there. And we need to encourage students, current students to look for this type of data so they can incorporate it into their practices once they once they graduate. As for cancer, you know, I think about it in my head is we’re attacking the two sides of healthcare: preventative, and then the sickest patients, right. And I started doing breast cancer genetics research, before I ever even got into pharmacy school. So oncology was a huge passion of mine, I had a mentor named Dr. Ronald Worthington, who really drove me towards that kind of thing. It’s why I almost went and did a PhD, right. And so I just, you know, you know, anyone with cancer, you know, what this is, like, it’s a tough field to be into a lot of the times. I think biologically, it’s, it’s extremely interesting. So again, it’s easy for me to write about because I have so much passion for it. But we need people that are willing to go into this space forever gonna take care of cancer, and cancer is not something you just cure, right? There’s 1000s of tumor types. I mean, it’s not it’s not how it works. And the general public thinks, oh, what’s the cure for cancer, it’s not going to be one thing, I can guarantee it. But you know, we need pharmacists, we need physicians, nurses that grow passion for oncology early, and then are willing to really put in the time down the line and hopefully, start kicking away at these patient outcomes, which are historically not I mean, you take you take metastatic lung cancer, five year overall survival rates of less than 10%. And I mean, that’s, you know, not not great, obviously, still unmet needs. So these are the areas we’ve chosen to focus on, again, for passion and impact. 

Tim Ulbrich  13:23

I love what you’ve built, because to me, I can hear the passion in your voice, I can hear the energy and excitement, right, you’re building something that’s taking an area of interest for you, one that you’re naturally going to be excited about create creating content getting others involved in, that you’re then able to teach others of which has more impact, right, and I would assume that’s energizing as well, as you see, hey, people are learning about things that maybe they otherwise wouldn’t have learned about. And it’s written in a way that you can connect from a pharmacist to pharmacist perspective, and an immediate need, right, and ultimately leading to scholarships and other efforts that are having a benefit. So that has the the ingredients that are so important, that we often talk about on the for profit side of a business, but yeah, here we’re talking about the nonprofit side, which is, you know, equally if not more important. I’m curious to hear more about, you know, you started, I heard you say, Hey, I just got started, right. You know, I just got started, I knew I wanted to create my own platform. I didn’t necessarily think, or I couldn’t see all the dots connect of how this would become a 501 C3, maybe that was an idea that loosely you held. But ultimately, you went that direction. And it very much could have been a you know, blog site that turned into a for profit membership community, a lot of different models that are out there. What was that juncture decision point where you said, Hey, I’m going to keep forward with this educational mission. But I really do want to make it into a nonprofit effort. 

Brentsen Wolf  14:44

Yeah. You kind of You briefly mentioned it and it was it’s based off of passion. And I think if you can articulate well for yourself, what is actually going to drive you and prevent you from burning out. That’s how you make this decision. For me if I knew that if I was trying to do this stuff, you know, as in a for profit matter, just to make money for myself, which I honestly don’t I see no issues with that I just know that I would have personally burned out on. It would it’s it would have become work instead of a passion project, I would have been chasing metrics that, you know, as a nonprofit, if I don’t make a million dollars, it, it does not bother me, I’m giving as much money away as I possibly can. And if I don’t hit a specific number, it doesn’t hurt me personally. I think if it was a for profit model, those numbers would have gotten into my head a little bit more, would have affected my mentality towards Rx Teach in general. And I was just trying to avoid that. And so, you know, getting the board together, a group of people that were on the same page is like, Hey, we’re just doing this in our free time. This is passion driven 100%. And whatever, however many dollars we can donate. That’s the goal. And we’re going to get that number as big as we can get it, but we’re not going to kill ourselves doing it. And that’s kind of how we landed on this model. Because, you know, I’ve got a one year old daughter at home, I got a full time job, all these things you got to you got to make sure it’s it’s driven by the right motivation, or you’re not gonna make it. 

Tim Ulbrich  16:08

I like that, because I think I was sharing with someone recently that when we think about a lot of the burnout that we’re seeing in our profession and to be honest, it’s not just pharmacy, right? I think the healthcare workforce at large, obviously, the impact of the pandemic and, and other factors in there as well, I think something like this, not to suggest you to go out and start your own nonprofit, but be being involved in an effort, whether that’s an investment of time, money, both, right, I think that participation in something bigger than the grind of what you’re doing every day, even for those who say, I love my job, great. There’s still a lot of stressing me evolve. You’ve got a one one year old child at home, like life’s busy, right. And I think, you know, for us to kind of go back to our roots and say, Hey, why did we get interested in healthcare in the first place? I think we lose that sometimes over time. And just an encouragement to listeners, you know, whether it’s getting involved in Rx Teach, whether it’s getting involved something local in your community, or both great, like, what are some of those initiatives and opportunities where people can get involved? And I think that naturally can be in part an antidote to some of that burnout that we so often see. So curious, certainly to hear you tie that directly back to that decision, that strategic move you made to go into the nonprofit direction. Yeah. How do you, not make money, right, that’s for profit language. But how do you ultimately raise funds that get delivered in the form of scholarships. Is it individual donations? What what is the predominant ways in which you’re raising money as an organization? 

Brentsen Wolf  17:34

So right now we do it in three different ways, right. So the first way is, what we started off at the beginning is that this is gonna be a free resource for anyone to read and do with what they want. And we’re gonna go deep into data, we’re gonna do all these things. If you care about our mission, and you want to get this content with a small monthly donation, we’re gonna let you do that. And so we just set up a couple of different subscriber levels. Yeah, paid members get some extra stuff, you know, maybe an extra article here and there. But really, it is like, hey, if you find value in this and care about what we’re doing, it’s always going to be free. And we have because we want to change the community, right? i If you can’t afford it, I’m not going to make you pay for it. But if you want to contribute, feel free to do that. So we have a subscriber base model, which is probably where we get the most of our money. We also have a couple of digital assets, which are pretty new that I actually have enjoyed this process a lot. So we have some cheats, cheat sheets on things like cirrhosis, sickle cell disease, we have a how to guide for Journal Club which I absolutely love.

Tim Ulbrich  18:33

I could’ve used that one in pharmacy school! 

Brentsen Wolf  18:34

Yeah, I totally agree with that thinking back to pharmacy school days! Kristin put that together, which I think it was important for a resident or someone with residency experience to do that, because she puts Pearls in there, but like, what, what questions can you expect your preceptor to ask you, so that you can prepare for this journal club where in an article can you find this information? You know, whether it’s New England Journal medicine, or general oncology, whatever it is JAMA? So that’s a great resource. And we’ve also paired up with Dr. Alex Popin, and who wrote a book called High Powered Medicine. Yeah, so we sell his book on the website, and we have an agreement in place. And we split the profits for that, which we’re very thankful to him to, you know, contribute to Rx Teacg in that way, as well. So digital assets is the second piece. And then the third piece is just like you said, one time donations, anyone who wants to give money based off of, you know, hearing this podcast, or you ran into me at a bar, and I was telling you about grip strength. Right. And they were like, oh, that’s you know, that’s interesting. So people can certainly do that on the website, just one time donations. And of course, we appreciate that. And then like I said, we have partnered with local universities to actually allocate the funds in the form of scholarships and those areas I’ve already mentioned, but that’s how we actually bring the cash in.

Tim Ulbrich  19:48

So one of the things I’m always curious to hear from people at start anything for profit, nonprofit is, you know, it’s one thing to have an idea it’s another thing to execute on an idea and it’s a big step and for some people, it’s the actual mechanics. For others. It’s the fear of, hey, you know, what if nobody kind of likes the idea of what I have out there, what if this isn’t successful? You obviously took those steps, which you know, are great that you did it led to the platform and what you have here now and certainly something you can continue to build off of. But talk us through some of those early mechanics and decisions. You know, you’re talking about a board, you talked about 501C3, like, I think sometimes even though you haven’t been doing this that long, sometimes we blow past those things like, hey, those happened. But those are big milestones that often give me barriers. So talk to us about those early stages involved going from idea to actually get into the point where you can meet someone at a bar or a conference or whatever, and say, Hey, you can make a tax deductible donation, right?

Brentsen Wolf  20:44

Yeah, exactly. Yeah, no, that’s a great, it’s a great question. And it is there’s, there’s multiple steps. But before I get into that, I just want to say that like, if you’re thinking about doing something, whether it’s a nonprofit, for profit, blog, side project, whatever it is, there’s never going to be a perfect time. You know, I hear all the time, like, oh, once I get X number of dollars in the bank, or once I get to this place in my career, that’s when I’ll do this. And I can tell you, you know, ever since having my first child, you just, there’s no perfect time, it’s always going to be hard in some fashion, there’s always going to be some kinds of challenges, and you’re going to meet those along the way and overcome them and feel good about that. So stop waiting is my first piece of advice, just take the first step. And if it if it goes slowly, if it takes a long time, or it’s really difficult upfront, that’s fine, it was never going to be super easy, right. So that’s, that’s my first piece. But in terms of actually doing the nonprofit stuff, specifically, you know, I was working with a lawyer in our family, which certainly helped me. But talking with someone who has done this in the past is definitely a first step and just feel out what you need. So things like your bylaws, your articles of incorporation, your employee identification number, application, your Conflict of Interest Statement, these are kind of that’s kind of the four core things, you really need upfront, to register with your state. You have to start at the state level, you don’t go straight to the federal government, you have to, you know, become a corporation in the state level. Once you do that, that’s when you can actually send in some of the documentation at the federal level. And hopefully, if again, if you’re working with people who have done this before, when you actually put in your stuff with the state, you’re putting in there that you intend to be a 501C3, you’re making sure that you meet the criteria for nonprofits. So you need to go do some research on. You have to be in certain areas in order to qualify for nonprofit tax exempt status. So you want to word everything from your mission statement to your bylaws to support the fact that this is going to be a nonprofit organization, you do all that stuff upfront first, before ever talking with the federal government. For us, we were able to send in what’s called an EZ application, literally capital E capital Z, because we were bringing in less than $50,000 a year annually. That’s kind of the cut off. Even if you are making less than that you can do a full fledged application if you wish to. But certainly if you’re bringing in a million dollars in your first year, you have to you can’t use this EZ applicant is one piece of paper front and back and you’re just checking, I just checked no for everything right? It was very easy. But once you get back your EIN and your the, you’ll get an official letter from the government saying like, hey, we recognize you as a 501 C 3, that’s when you can start to reap some of the benefits of the nonprofit. So things like we use Stripe, to bring in money from our websites and Stripe has nonprofit rates that we can utilize. A lot of these third party vendors will have nonprofit rates. And sometimes it’s not public. Go look on Reddit like hey, is there a special rate for so and so and go take advantage of that. But after that you are going to file some stuff, even once you hear back from the federal government. And that’s going to be annually. It’s like federal income tax your state and income tax. In Illinois, you have to at least register with the Attorney General. You know, stuff like that is it’s paperwork. You know, that’s always going to be a small part of this. And I think staying organized is important. But again, just take a breath if you’re new to all this legal stuff like I was, it can seem a little bit like, I don’t even know what I’m doing. But at the end of the day, it’s it’s just paperwork. You know, if you’re an organized person, you’re gonna be fine. And I certainly don’t think it’s anything that should prevent you from doing this. Again, if things get off to a rocky start, like, especially in a nonprofit sense, who cares, you’re doing this for a very good reason, right? Like be easy on yourself. Just get there eventually. And let things let things sort them out as they will. 

Tim Ulbrich  24:32

I’m with you on the you know, I’ve kind of gone down this twice now in the last six months you and I talked a little bit about this. We started the nonprofit YFP Gives and your overview was great by the way from state to federal level. So anyone’s looking for like a checklist or at least just a frame of reference of the steps involved. That was fantastic! The first time we went through it we used an attorney. So helpful, right because it seems so overwhelming until you can see it. And to your point, there’s, you know, shortened forms based on your projected revenue and other things. But just to see the process from a state level up to the 501C3, okay, now that you’ve done that, you’ve got to register with the Attorney General on the state level, you got to file this solicitation format. For someone to just be able to say do XY and Z, I can assure you as well worth the fees, but I respect that that can be a barrier. Yeah. Second time I went through it, which was something not nonrelated on the pharmacy side, we EZ application was the form I had been through it, I kind of saw all the steps and I felt comfortable, like navigating that part myself seeing all that, but I couldn’t have wrapped my arms around it the first time. So I think that’s something as folks are thinking about this, you know, anticipating those legal fees, and I think it is something that certainly does add a lot of value, you’re growing through it. So great, great overview.

Brentsen Wolf  25:52

Actually, I want to add one thing to the one of the values that the attorney can can bring in is not only make sure you file the right paperwork, but oftentimes these folks have worked with corporations in the past, and they kind of know, over the years, what you know, what problems might arise. And so they will give you recommendations on how to maybe word bylaws and this kind of thing to prevent an issue that would happen if you wouldn’t have taken this step up front. So that’s a very important thing. I talked about preventative medicine, you might as well be preventative on this front as well. And an attorney can do that. 

Tim Ulbrich  26:25

That’s great. Let’s talk about the future, Brentsen. So as you look out over the next 5, 10,15 years, however long you want to go for the vision, you know, what does success look like for Rx Teach?You’ve taken this important step from idea to going through all the mechanics, the legal stuff, we just started, getting to the point where you can take tax deductible donations, you’ve been creating content for a while. What is the next iteration look like for RxTeach in terms of the work that you’re doing? And and how you would measure success?

Brentsen Wolf  26:55

Yeah, so you know, I think we’re constantly trying to assess community change, at least locally. And so that has started to happen already. RX Teach, you know, I think influencing folks locally. And that’s, that’s great news, and it’s specifically on these topics of interest. But like big, big picture goal in the next 10 years, would be to essentially expand our scholarship availability to more or less every pharmacy school in the country, but also get outside of pharmacy school. So we started with pharmacy just because that’s our background, but we’ve already started working with some schools of Exercise Science, mostly because, you know, in my perfect world, those two things come together a lot more than they currently do, you know, taking that preventative side of healthcare, into the healthcare providers, actual education. Again, that’s an area of unmet need. So scholarships across the country is what we want to be known for, to where if you can show that you’re actually interested in these very important topics, we’re going to give you money. And I feel no guilt at all about putting dollar signs in front of certain topics in order to drive people towards, well, maybe I’ll at least look up what that means if I want to get the scholarship! That’s fine with me, you know, I that’s I have no guilt on that kind of thing. And then, of course, building out the types of people who are willing to write for RX Teach and, you know, just help get our message out there. Cardiac disease is the number one killer of Americans. Kills more people than liver disease and diabetes and stroke, and it combined, it’s ridiculous. So, you know, the more we can prevent these types of things, and however, we’re going to do that, whether it’s scholarships, putting out putting out more content, selling more stuff to fund these types of events. That’s what we’re going to do. And again, I guess the number one thing for 10 years is don’t burn out, right? So it’s right, you know, keep finding that passion, make sure I’m keeping me and the rest of the board ignited about what we’re doing. And just following that passion.

Tim Ulbrich  28:48

As my partner Tim often says, you know, it’s a marathon, not a sprint. I think that’s true here as well. Right? You’ve got an important mission that transcends not only 10 years, but transcends your career. Sure. And to me, what I hear you doing, which I love is you’re getting others involved. This is not a Brentsen initiative. This is a board. This is a bigger initiative. And as those tentacles get out further, you know, it’s not about you and the face and the name. It’s about the impact, right that you can have. And that impact, I presume, isn’t going away. So when you say in 3040 years, like, hey, it’s time for someone else to take the reins like you’ve got other people that you’ve delegated, and gotten involved with on the way. This has been awesome. I appreciate you taking the time again, Rxteach.org. Make sure to check out the website we’d love for our community to not only learn about what you’re doing, get involved financially. You know, reach out to Brentsen, the team if you’ve got ideas for content that you’d like to contribute, make a donation if there’s a connection or relationship that you think could be helpful. Make sure to reach out to do that. As Brentsen says on the website, “Every cent will be given to students as merit based scholarships in cancer research and preventative medicine education.” So if you make Rx Teach a part of your giving plan, know that that’s going to be going to good use. So Brentsen, thanks so much for taking Time to come on the show. 

Brentsen Wolf  30:01

Thanks, Tim. Really appreciate it. 

Tim Ulbrich  30:04

[DISCLAIMER] As we conclude this week’s podcast and important reminder that the content on this show is provided to you for informational purposes only and is not intended to provide and should not be relied on for investment or any other advice. Information in the podcast and corresponding material should not be construed as a solicitation or offer to buy or sell any investment or related financial products. We urge listeners to consult with a financial advisor with respect to any investment. Furthermore, the information contained in our archived newsletters, blog posts and podcasts is not updated and may not be accurate at the time you listen to it on the podcast. Opinions and analyses expressed herein are solely those of Your Financial Pharmacist unless otherwise noted, and constitute judgments as of the dates published. Such information may contain forward looking statements, which are not intended to be guarantees of future events. Actual results could differ materially from those anticipated in the forward looking statements. For more information, please visit yourfinancialpharmacist.com/disclaimer. Thank you again for your support of the Your Financial Pharmacist Podcast. Have a great rest of your week.

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YFP 359: Pharmacy Innovators with Jamie Wilkey, PharmD


Dr. Jamie Wilkey shares her entrepreneurial journey of building and selling a business on this episode of the Pharmacy Innovators series hosted by Corrie Sanders.

This episode is brought to you by YFP+.

Episode Summary

In our YFP Podcast Pharmacy Innovators with Corrie Sanders series, Dr. Jamie Wilkey joins Corrie to discuss her entrepreneurship journey, emphasizing the importance of thinking big, pushing boundaries, and utilizing education to achieve success. Dr. Wilkey shares her journey of transitioning from a community pharmacist role to building a successful pharmacogenomics practice, highlighting the importance of validating ideas, leveraging scrappy methods, and empowerment through helping others. Dr. Wilkey also shares her experience with selling a pharmacy business and valuable insights on their professional journey, emphasizing the importance of adapting to the changing landscape of the pharmacy industry and embracing digital business ownership.

About Today’s Guest

Dr. Jamie Wilkey is a PharmD who loves what she does and brings passion and happiness to the pharmacy profession.

Jamie has had a varied career from working retail pharmacy, to owning, scaling and selling her own company, and to working as a consultant for top universities and companies. Jamie is optimistic about the future of pharmacy and knows great things are in store for those pharmacists who are willing to push boundaries, to think big, and to use the full extent of their education. 

You can find her happily living debt-free with her 4 boys being outside as much as humanly possible and enjoying Utah’s National Parks. Or reading. A lot.

Key Points from the Episode

  • Pharmacy career paths with Dr. Jamie Wilkie. [0:00]
  • Building a pharmacogenomics business as a side hustle while working full-time as a pharmacist. [2:27]
  • Entrepreneurship, pharmacogenomics, and career transition. [9:11]
  • Transitioning from pharmacist to content creator, with insights on building a business with vulnerability and transparency. [16:19]
  • Selling a business after two years of growth and scaling. [21:34]
  • Selling a pharmacy business, including the importance of mentors, due diligence, and a clean break. [26:32]
  • Adapting pharmacy businesses for success in today’s world. [31:40]
  • Embracing growth and personal development as an entrepreneur. [36:18]
  • Various income streams, including coaching, teaching, and pharmacy work. [39:40]
  • Entrepreneurship and pharmacy practice with a focus on finding joy and success in the field. [42:39]

Episode Highlights

“And so it was really cool seeing that, like it’s not the smartest person or the most qualified person who can build their own thing.” – Jamie Wilkey [3:47]

“Saving gives you such a buffer. And I really think it’s kind of a secret sauce for succeeding in entrepreneurship. When you don’t need your business to turn a profit the next day and aren’t white knuckling it saying, I have to have a paycheck by the end of this week. It becomes more fun and a creative pursuit like a hobby that I’m going to figure out. But I’m also going to get paid too. And it’s so different and so fun.” – Jamie Wilkey [16:57]

“In a way being vulnerable and saying like, I hate retail, I gotta get out. And I’m passionate about precision medicine so I’m doing this one way or another, makes it easier to jump on board because people can see themselves in you when you’re first starting.” – Jamie Wilkey [18:57]

“Just start, just do the thing. Put yourself out there, start solving a problem in the world and don’t overthink it. Put your energy into action.” -Jamie Wilkey [31:42]

“I feel like it’s riskier just to stay in your job with no other revenue options than to build something on the side a few hours a week and think in terms of years and decades rather than needing a quick buck tomorrow.” – Jamie Wilkey [33:29]

Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode

Episode Transcript

Corrie Sanders 00:00

Hi YFP Community. Corrie Sanders here host of the Pharmacy Innovators segment of the YFP Podcast. Pharmacy Innovators is designed for pharmacist navigating the entrepreneurial journey. In this series we feature stories and strategies to help guide current and aspiring pharmacy entrepreneurs. Today we have Dr. Jamie Wilkey, a PharmD who loves what she does and brings passion and happiness to the pharmacy profession. Jamie has had a varied career from working in retail pharmacy to owning, scaling and selling her own company. She also works as a consultant for top universities. Jamie is optimistic about the future of pharmacy and knows great things are ahead. For those pharmacists who are willing to push boundaries, think big and use the full extent of their education. Today, you can find her happily living debt free with her four boys and being outside as much as humanly possible while enjoying Utah’s National Parks. I’m excited to share so many points of growth from Jamie’s optimistic perspective and hope you will find this episode to be inspiring from not only the lens of pharmacy, but how Jamie’s attitude and perseverance has served her work life balance. Please welcome to the podcast, Dr. Jamie Wilkey. Jamie, welcome to the podcast. We’re excited to have you here.

Dr. Jamie Wilkey  01:10

Thank you, Corrie! This is gonna be so fun!

Corrie Sanders 01:13

And I know that you’ve done a lot of podcasts in the past, you have a very public content platform. So we won’t go too deep into your background. But for those that don’t know you, why don’t you just start with briefly describing your path in pharmacy with school and training and any additional certificates you might have.

Dr. Jamie Wilkey  01:29

Sure, Cory, so I grew up in Wyoming. So I went to University of Wyoming pharmacy school, which was one of the best decisions I ever made, graduated as a 24 year old and I started making a six figure salary. And I was like over the moon like, this is why I went to pharmacy school. So I could be a girl with a doctorate degree earning like $130,000 a year and not have a career ladder. I could just do that and go part time when I had kids. And so that’s what I did. I worked full time for a few years. And then I ultimately had four little boys. Two years apart, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam. And it really helped to have a pharmacy job where I could just go part time during all those years of having babies and toddlers. And so I worked part time for many years at Walgreens. Ultimately, after 10 years, I had still been at Walgreens and I felt like, Oh man, this job that I thought was like so perfect. And it really did serve me well for a decade. Ah, there’s no career ladder, there’s no growth. I’m like on the hamster wheel doing the same thing. And I’ll probably keep doing it for another 30 years unless I change something. And so Corrie, really the thing that changed my whole career was just getting on LinkedIn. Until then I didn’t even have a LinkedIn account. In the summer of 2020, I created an account to look for a new job. And once I saw other pharmacists on there, like doing their own thing, not just working retail, hospital, or as an MSL, it felt like I was coming out of a dark cave into like the light of potential. And it was just so exciting to me to see that like, oh, I don’t have to rely on getting a new job or getting more certifications to build a dream life like, these other people are doing it themselves. I’m gonna jump in the race, I can do it too. I have no idea what I’m doing. But clearly, like your future is determined by you. And I want to just try my hand at it. So I just got on LinkedIn and started writing on there everyday kind of documenting, like, what the heck I’m doing like, here I am this retail girl, I have no residency, no fellowship, no certifications, I’ve literally just been clocking into a job for a decade, and only doing CEs required to keep my license like, I loved my job. But I was not overly engaged in being a pharmacist. And so it was really cool seeing that, like it’s not the smartest person or the most qualified person who can build their own thing. It’s just the person who thinks they can. And so also I saw the pattern very quickly that like the people who have an audience who are teaching other people who are like monetizing their knowledge in some way, are very consistent at writing online, was like, well, that’s free. I don’t know what I’m doing. But I’m like, such a nerd for habits. Like I will set a habit every single day to write online every day. So that’s what I did. And it ultimately turned into me turning into an entrepreneur, and starting my own business because I writing not only on LinkedIn, but I was like on Instagram, the only social media account I had and learning about pharmacogenomics. I started like posting to my friends like hey, did you know a genetic test, like change prescribing for the rest of your life? I think this is so cool, but I want to try this on someone, does anyone have trouble with like medicine that you want to like let me practice on? And so many of my friends raise their hands and neighbors came out of the woodworks that like oh my gosh, I’m struggling with medicine. Can you help me? That I started buidling a business before I even had a business before I had an LLC or done any of the paperwork. And so it was really cool to like validate ideas out of the gate in a really scrappy way that was totally me to just start earning money and Corrie, I tell you, once you like actually charge for your services as a pharmacist, oh, really lights a fire under you that like, wow, I just earned way more helping one patient on a zoom call, then, like a day in the pharmacy. And so it was really cool and empowering to one, see how working in a new way, like lit a fire in me that I wasn’t just like a robot, checking the boxes that I like, help people in new ways. And two that, like, what it was like to help someone and to get a raving review and like really feel like I helped their life. So once I did that, it felt like, okay, the time is ticking on my retail career. It’s been cool, but I can’t do this forever. And so I just, it was so scrappy, Corrie, like just talking to friends and neighbors reaching out on LinkedIn to prescribers out here in Utah. I built my own consulting practice where I saw patients remotely and in their clinics, and just was like a pharmacogenomic pharmacist. And how did I become that from a Walgreens girl, I got a certificate. I did like the 16 hour CE certificate like yeah, now I’m PGX certified like, it took a week. It was not hard, because we’re drug experts, and we just so undervalue our expertise. And the biggest learning you get is like by actually doing it. And by helping and people don’t care. They just know like, you’re a drug expert. If it takes you a while to figure it out behind the scenes before you meet with me, I don’t care, just help me. And so that was really cool. Okay, that was kind of long. I’ll start I’ll start to speed up now. And so as I’m like helping people, one on one, I’m also building on LinkedIn, and sharing like, all of all of the ups and downs of entrepreneurship. And a number of people started keep repeating, reaching out to me on direct messages, and like, hey, that’s, I love what you’re building. Can you teach me how? And so ultimately, like, guys, I’m still at Walgreens, because you can’t just quit your job overnight, unless you’re completely financially independent. And I’m working in the cracks on my time. And, oh, I have four kids, you know. So I have no time. But I want to teach other pharmacists this. And so one of my friends gave me really good advice. She was like Jamie, just create a little mini online course, that way you can teach people at like, their own speed, it doesn’t take your time, create it once. And just help them that way. And so that was awesome advice. So I just did and Corrie, I tell you what that first course was like, so awkward and bad. I just like got on Zoom and recorded, like 12 different lessons without like a PowerPoint or anything, it was just me talking. But it had the core of what they want it and I sold that to 11 people for $500. Like, here you go, tell me what you liked to tell me what you hated. Tell me what I could have improved. And they were really candid and honest and saying like I loved this. This I could have used more of. Don’t include this. And so what turned out is my scrappy product, then I could polish and redo like rerecord with good visuals and resources, then I could turn around and sell it for $1,000. And so that’s what I started doing in mid 2021. Started selling my online course, just through my LinkedIn posts, not like ads or anything because I still didn’t know how to do ads. Started selling that. And it grew and grew and grew and grew and grew and grew. And ultimately, after two and a half years, I’d earned more than a million dollars in revenue from that little course, which was just wild to me to see how like one digital asset can grow in value and in reach. So ultimately, we helped more than 350 pharmacists understand and build like their own pharmacogenomic practice, and it was really cool. Where do you want me to go with this story?

 

Corrie Sanders 09:11

I’m gonna I’m gonna break it down even further when I say that that was a great bird’s eye view to start with with, you know, where your training was where you spent a lot of your initial pharmacy experience, then ultimately, where you saw a gap and a need in care and how you pivoted to something that could be monetized in a sustainable working way over time. So I want to I’m going to chunk it up just because I want the audience to really learn about your mindset and the steps that you had taken at certain points during that story. Let’s start with your path to entrepreneurship in general. So it sounds like you heard about pharmacogenomics through some kind of source and you’re like, Wow, this is something that’s totally applicable to practice. And while you were still practicing in retail, you started building out a pharmacogenomics consulting company, is that correct? 

Dr. Jamie Wilkey  09:57

Correct. Yes. 

Corrie Sanders  09:59

So reaching out to different providers on LinkedIn. And then ultimately, were you working for part time at Walgreens at that point, or and you were able to take on a couple additional days in clinic? How did that transition look like between your retail position and taking on consulting and either a part time or eventually a full time manner?

Dr. Jamie Wilkey  10:18

Yeah, so I was at Walgreens mostly full time, it was probably like 30 hours a week. And so in my days off, I would see patients when I was not at Walgreens. And then when I ultimately got into a clinic, and they wanted to have me there, I just gave them my schedule on advanced and said, like, got it most Fridays, I will be here, like, fill it up with my patients on Fridays and just batch it like, I would love to be here every day. But until then just batch it on Friday. And they’re like, great, we’re happy to have you. That’s when you’re available. Patients don’t know. 

Corrie Sanders  10:52

Like you’re not there, Monday through Friday!

Dr. Jamie Wilkey  10:53

Yes, behind the scenes like we’re next available is this Friday or next Friday, when would you like it? And so it made it easier to batch things and to like, validate that this is working and see the revenue coming in. Because although it wasn’t thrilled with my Walgreens job, it still has an awesome paycheck. And it’s still a good job. And so I was not about to like just burn the bridge quit and then hope entrepreneurship works. Because I have no experience. I’ve never done this before. I do not come from an entrepreneurial family. So it’s definitely like figuring it out. But while you’re balancing a job, like a job is such a good resource to give you the safety net, to build something on the side that it felt like other than missing time watching Netflix, there really wasn’t a downside. Because I’m getting experience and learning when people said no or no thanks, like it it taught me something too. It wasn’t like, Well, this has to succeed, or it was a waste of time.

Corrie Sanders 11:46

And then at what point did you make the formal transition? So you’ve got four kids at this point, it’s not like you can walk away from a job without a proof of concept going into this new consulting journey. So at what point did you decide okay, this is it, the model on the side is now something that’s worth taking on full time. What did that breaking point or tipping point look like for you? And when did that happen?

Dr. Jamie Wilkey  12:08

Once I crossed about $75,000 in revenue, it took probably eight months. I was like, oh, okay, in eight months, I earned more than I would have earned at Walgreens over that time. So then I the next step wasn’t quitting it was like, okay, just put me on PRN, like, keep me on the books, but I don’t want to be scheduled regularly anymore. So then I would fill in like, a couple times a month like for, that’s back when like COVID clinics were thinking and like, I was still in the system for a long time just to like, keep that as a safety net. And still just keep cash flowing too.

Dr. Jamie Wilkey  12:56

Which I think that’s a great way to put it is that this now your full time job has become your side gig. And your side gig has transitioned into your full time job, and any other elaborations on what chapter of life you’re in at the moment. So when we talk to pharmacy entrepreneurs, I mean, there’s a million reasons under the sun, why you shouldn’t be making this transition or taking something on whether it’s student loans or kids or it doesn’t meet your retirement goals or your risk. If you’re risk averse or risk tolerance, whatever risk strategy that you have any other insight into the chapter of your life, besides having four kids you were in at that moment that you think was helpful in making that transition, or that would be useful to know. 

Dr. Jamie Wilkey  13:33

So at this point, we have four kids, we’ve had bought our house a number of years ago, right after graduation. And so between and my husband is working, he’s working full time. So there’s dual income, which is really helpful to get a solid financial foundation. So at this point, we had our house and we’re heavily paying it off quickly and had been maxing out our 401ks every year ever since we were like new little workers, and have a really good six to 12 month savings of both of our incomes so that like if neither of us works for the next year, could we pay for life, assuming that like we both lost our job and like, couldn’t get one for a year because I am very risk averse, Corrie. I love like stability, and I love money and I love being able to make decisions from a point of abundance rather than scarcity. And so it did. It took, let’s say this point, it’s like 10 to 13 years into my career. So it was not a new grad. I had my student loans paid off. We had no debt other than our house. And my husband has a good job. He’s an accountant. And so we both are professionals. We’re in a really good place financially because we’re savers too like, we don’t have the super big house and like all the new cars and stuff. So as savers it felt like okay, we’ve been killing ourselves off like saving and working. My next big crazy goal, Corrie, was that like, I want to pay off this house, I just want to be completely debt free before I turned 40. And I kept like crunch every time I’m at work. I’m like crunching the numbers like, Okay, how many more years at Walgreens? How many extra shifts doing overtime? I felt like okay, I could do that in five years. But after I got on LinkedIn, it kind of ruined me seeing that like, but you can also make money other ways. So I just got to try this, like, can I maybe get there faster, or in a more fun way than like physically being at that retail store. While like, I don’t want to leave my kids, especially with COVID. It made it very apparent that like, white collar workers can grab their laptop and go home. Everyone else, like you’re on the frontlines, you’re a hero and like, I don’t want to be a hero. I want to be with my kids and earn money in a new way. Because I’m kind of jealous of all, like Utah. The point of view time in it’s called Silicon slopes, because there’s just like so much tech and software development that it feels like it’s in the air that like work in new ways, do cool things. And here I am, like an antiquated pharmacy job. So it felt like I just got to a point. I just got to try. I don’t have much to lose other than nothing. There’s always a job at big box stores.

Corrie Sanders  16:19

No, and that was really insightful, insightful. I love how you shared how much savings you guys had between you and your husband and the risk strategy that you had taken on. And not only some of your already accomplishments with your debt, but what were your debt goals long term? I think that that’s so important to outline prior to making a career transition, where there’s a lot of risk involved is knowing what the backup plan is, or how much time you have before that backup plan needs to be activated. So it sounds like you and your husband had a lot of healthy conversations prior to that jumping point in which you already had a proof of concept. 

Dr. Jamie Wilkey  16:51

We’re both savers and really like yes, since this is the Your Financial Pharmacist Podcast, like truly saving, saving saving gives you such a buffer. And I really think it’s kind of a secret sauce for succeeding in entrepreneurship is that you don’t like need your business to turn a profit the next day, you don’t need and are white knuckling it saying like, I have to have a paycheck by the end of this week. It becomes more fun and like a creative pursuit that’s like, this is a hobby that I’m going to figure out. But I’m also going to get paid from, too and it’s so different and so fun.

Corrie Sanders 17:25

And I’m sure that your clientele and people that you talk with can also tell when you’re coming from a place of abundance versus scarcity, as you said earlier, like having to make that next sale versus making the next sale when it fits into their timeline, not necessarily yours. It’s such a big difference. Yeah. So the next question I want to talk about is when you made the transition, so we talked about how you started transitioning into content creation, creation for pharmacogenomics for other pharmacists. When did that happen? You were consulting for how long? And then when did you notice on LinkedIn? Okay, this is something that other pharmacists are looking for. And I’m gonna start now doing this on the side, in addition to consulting, what did that look like?

Dr. Jamie Wilkey  18:05

Probably be like between three and six months. 

Corrie Sanders  18:07

Oh, wow. 

Dr. Jamie Wilkey  18:08

So it was still pretty fast. So it was still new ish. But I think that’s part of what made it work was like, I’m new with you. But I figured out the next three steps, and we’re doing this together, and I never wanted it to be like, I am the best. I know the way I am perfect. More like, here’s what I’ve learned, here’s general principles. Now, within this program, we’re all coming together. And we’re all precision pharmacists. And we’re all going to help each other and teach each other because there’s not only like one way to do something, what works for me in Utah may be different for someone in Arizona, and like we’re pooling knowledge and pooling resources, rather than, like, I must have everything figured out. Because I think that’s what stops a lot of pharmacists like, until I know everything and I have X amount of experience that no one will help me. In a way being vulnerable and being you and saying like, I hate retail, I gotta get out. And I’m passionate about precision medicine. So I’m doing this one way or another, like, makes it easier to jump on board because people can see themselves in you when you’re first starting.

Corrie Sanders 19:12

And I think that’s something I’ve always respected about you is the amount of transparency that you share with your audience and with the academy is, I’m not here to tell you I know every answer, but I’m here to tell you that I’m going to work through this with you. And I think that’s such a better business model than preaching you have all the answers. So I love that it’s so much more relatable with that transparency comes a lot of relationship and building abilities. But I just love the line that you said I’m here to learn with you and I’m here to learn alongside you and help you get to the same end goal. We have a similar goal in mind. So what did it and that was Arches, LLC is the LLC that you eventually started. What did Arches look like over time? So you start with just 11 minute video or 11 short videos, and then you started putting out more visual content, you started growing the audience? And did you eventually start growing employees? What did Arches evolve into over the next couple of years?

Dr. Jamie Wilkey  20:09

Yeah, so for the first year, it was just me. And then I hired my first VA – virtual assistant. Because being married to an accountant, I know all the details of like employees, and how complicated an employee could be. So I, I, we never did hire an employee, it was all contract work. And especially it was really just me, I hired one VA, it was a good learning experience for both of us. But then I found like my BFF VA, Alexa, she’s still like my best friend, six months later as a recommendation from a friend. And she and I just like tag teamed it and went full force ahead that she really was the one who ran the company. And I got to like, be the face of it and provide the content. And she did all the back end logistics that take a lot of time. And I’m not a detail oriented person. And so it worked really well. And hiring people from the Philippines are the best because they have an amazing grasp of English. They’re such hard workers. And they’re at a price point that new business owners can afford rather than someone in the United States. And I am a little afraid for the US workforce, because everyone I’ve worked with from the Philippines is like just such an incredible human and turned into a good friend that like, it was a great way to start hiring. So it was me and Alexa, it originally started with like, just pace yourself videos of like, what else do you want, I’ll create this video. And then we created a private group on Facebook. So we had a private Facebook page. And that way, we’re like talking to each other every day. And then we’d have live weekly calls, every week, we would learn something else or have like a guest come in and speak on something that was adjacent that I wasn’t an expert in, like nutrigenomics, isn’t amazing how nutrition is affected by your genetics and have like nutrigenomics speakers and lamps come in. And so I recorded all of those and added it to the course. So  by the end of two years, there’s more than 70 hours of material in there. Wow. Which was huge. But it was also really awesome. Because it felt really comprehensive to understand like how to start a business, how to work with a lab, and giving people like labs themselves to work with and how to understand state rules and regulations. And then we started creating like documents and templates, like, here’s a whole bunch of legal forms, you’re probably going to need to start. Don’t hire an attorney for $6,000, like I had to do. Here’s a good base baseline to start with and learn that like maybe legal advice can help tweak it rather than everyone starting from scratch. So we started like pooling, like what people needed and created group resources as well. That was really fun. 

 

Corrie Sanders 22:44

That’s amazing. That’s amazing. It’s worth joining the academy just to save on the legal. At what point did you start considering selling the business? So I think that this is maybe something that you haven’t discussed on a podcast just yet. So I’m excited to dive into this. But how long had you had Arches LLC, to where you hit a certain inflection point where you’re like, wow, this is now something that I can consider selling? This is a worthwhile brand. When did that come into conversation? And who brought that to your attention? Or did you bring that to the attention of others? I want to highlight on a couple of things that you’ve said, because I think these are so valuable to the listener. And I know that these things are not generally taught in pharmacy school. So you said I am just a scrappy starter, I like to start and build things. One, definitely not taught in pharmacy school. And then maturing and scaling of a business. Also not taught in pharmacy school. Two very, very different skill sets. But you also said, you know, we leaned into mentors into resources outside of healthcare, which a lot of pharmacists we’re just so siloed into our own little bubbles, our pharmacy bubbles. I think it’s important to view healthcare and view your services through the lens of someone who is not involved in health care at all. And it sounds like that was really instrumental, especially at this building and scaling and selling portion of your business, it would be hard to find a pharmacist, I think that was so successful. But I love how you took on the lens of you know, I’m going to use this as a an internship into how to build businesses, because that will be a useful skill set, I’m sure for you in the future once you decide what your next steps are. So throughout this selling and building process, you had these two gentlemen who it sounds like you met through different networks. Who else had your best interest in mind? So did you, your husband’s an accountant, but what other resources did you use to make sure that you as the seller, were doing your due diligence and your homework and this was going to be something that was beneficial not only to your academy, but to you as well? 

Dr. Jamie Wilkey  23:19

Yeah, so it was two years in two years in, I felt like I was working with a mentor who was helping me with like webinars and how to sell and I he wasn’t actually like a person who did that, he runs a company similar to mine, except it’s for finances. And I just met him through a friend. And so he didn’t, I was like, Oh my gosh, teach me how to apply this to my program. But he wasn’t like, I’m a guy who teaches webinars. I was like, No, I saw what you did teach me how to do how to do it. So it was really cool. And after that, he just said like, Would you ever consider selling this? Because what you have is such a smooth running machine. Would you ever consider selling it? And at first I was like, No, this is my baby. I love it. But then after planting that seed, and over the next couple of months seeing that like oh man like these students are doing so well. They’re outgrowing me, because I can’t keep seeing patients, growing my own practice and doing this own business they’re two. Although it’s the same topic, two very different businesses that it felt like it’s probably the most responsible thing for this group to bring in scalable leadership because I’m a very scrappy starter, Corrie, I love like starting things and building from scratch, but I don’t like maturing things and scaling. I’ve learned that about myself. I don’t even like working with teams very much. Because ultimately, so it’s me and Alexa, and then we hired a couple of the students to help with marketing and to help like nurture the relationships in there, which was awesome, but I also found myself like, I just don’t like teams, I just want to build my own thing. You know, and so that combination of seeing my personality characteristics come through and the sustainability of what I had, and wanting to like serve these people best rather than keeping it as like my pride, like, No, this is my baby, I’m gonna keep it. I really want to do what’s best for this group. And so I told him, I was like, I don’t know how to sell a company, who do I talk to? And so he introduced me to someone in Utah, who buys and sells companies. And he was awesome, turned into a really good friend. And he helped me list the company and talk to multiple buyers and sellers. Well, I’m the seller, multiple buyers. And it actually turned out kind of funny, because right before we had a buyer who was interested and was sending a letter of intent, and he’s like, Actually, can I just buy it with my friend, and we’ll run it together. Because I’ve seen the books like I love this, can we just run it together? I was like, Cool, I’m down with that, I still want to like, learn from you and hang with this group a little bit. And so we did it. And so we sold it. And we got a third of the company like an ownership. And it was really cool to work with two people outside of health care who sure have a lot of experience in scaling companies and multimillion dollar companies. And so I consider it like an internship into like, how business is done, and how to like, really help this group and scale it in a more sustainable way than like, me just trying to like Google and figure out like, Okay, how do I do this next.

Dr. Jamie Wilkey  27:45

My husband as a CPA is really good. Don’t underestimate accountants, I think they, you can use one instead of an attorney for most business questions, especially like reading contracts, and understanding like, if you’re getting your fair share accountants, oh, my gosh. Pro tip be married to an accountant, it as an entrepreneur, like it makes your life so much easier. And unless they give you the answer, you don’t want to hear! So I had him and then I did hire an attorney to help like, broker the deal and, and make sure everything looked good. But it’s I don’t know, I’m a very stress free person. And so it just felt right. And I was like, Yeah, let’s just, let’s just do it. So it was great, pretty simple and easy. I think it took like, two weeks from start to finish from like an offer to close. 

Corrie Sanders 28:47

So did you have a certain price point in mind? Was that something that that team brought to you? Is that something that outside evaluators have brought to you? Where did the price point come into mind? And then how did you guys if you don’t mind me asking divvy up ownership of the company? 

Dr. Jamie Wilkey  29:01

So the attorney I was working with helped navigate the price point. And my husband did his own math too, and was like yep, that seems very fair. So I got a six figure payout for selling my company which felt incredibly good as well as I got to keep the cash from the company which I’d saved up a ton of into too and then we just turned we created a new entity and all three of us owned it equally and then moved to the company to that entity so as a separate entity, so I still own Arches Health as my company I just run it under a different name now.

Corrie Sanders 29:37

Got it, got it. And so what are your responsibilities with this new company? So I’m assuming that’s Wealthy White Coat is what this has evolved into. What day to day responsibilities do you have with Wealthy White Coat or when you sold the company that was a clean slate and you are now free to roam and do something completely different?

Dr. Jamie Wilkey  29:54

Well, it was an evolution. So that was a year ago, we divvied it up 30,30,30 And then this January, February, I sold my share. So now they’re running it themselves. So over the course of the year, I was still like the one talking to the students and like keeping that relationship up. And they were the ones helping put in systems and to scale and to find like, partners and different income streams. Because all this time it’s, I’ve been through like one income stream like year long membership, that is it. And so they’re helping diversify different price points and ways to enter, and how to, you know, scale and bring more resources. So I had the fun part of like, being able to just keep doing what I was doing and like, have the conversations help people and keep giving them resources that they needed. So it was just fun.

Corrie Sanders 30:49

So still being the face of the company to some extent, managing the client relations. Okay, that’s interesting. 

Dr. Jamie Wilkey  30:54

Because those pharmacists are so great, I still like they’re just the best.

Corrie Sanders 31:01

You’re like, those are my babies. So this is my baby, and you have a special connection with each of them. So that’s easy to understand. And Jamie, any big lessons along the way? So we’ve covered a pretty extensive amount of ground in your professional career to this point, we’ve talked about your transition from retail to consulting, to creating something that can be bought and sold by other pharmacists, and then ultimately selling that business. Any big lessons learned along the way or big takeaways that come to top of mind when you’re thinking about an audience of pharmacy entrepreneurs, and I’m sure a lot of them want to get to this point of success. Any thoughts or any lessons that you think are worth sharing? 

Dr. Jamie Wilkey  31:40

Yes, two! One is just start, just do the thing. Put yourself out there, start solving a problem in the world and don’t overthink it, like, put your energy into action. I know our professional is so good at like overthinking and being perfect. And trying to like get all the education so that we’re the perfect person to help but like just helping and bringing your why you’re helping set you apart from anyone because everyone else is learning, learning, learning, stressing writing a plan. And if you’re out there doing you’re gonna run circles around people, so do, do, do. And secondly, I would say strongly I love digital businesses and online businesses, because there’s just not the risk there is with a cash intensive business like opening a pharmacy, you have to have the building, you have to have the products, you have to have the staff, you have to have the insurance, like the startup cost is half a million dollars, at least versus like a digital business, something you can do with just you and your laptop. You can start I think I funded myself $2,500 from my own checking account to start, and I’ve never had to like, put money back in because it’s all been profitable from there. There’s just no risk. And it’s a lot of reward. And even if it and don’t think of it in terms of like, will this win or lose? Will I succeed? Or is this a waste of my time think of it as like, I’m learning how to be relevant in today’s world, because it’s very different than anything in the past, especially with pharmacy and those who can adapt and like meet the needs of the world in a new way. You don’t have to have anyone’s permission, go do it. And it’s just really fun. And it’s not a risk. I feel like it’s riskier just to stay in your job with no other revenue options than to like, build something on the side a few hours a week and think in terms of years and decades rather than needing a quick buck tomorrow.

Corrie Sanders 33:46

I think that’s really valuable insight. And I completely agree with you, I think that the way that pharmacy is heading, it’s going to bode well for those that think outside the box. And that take on additional business ideas or opportunities that really leverage our clinical skill set. Because I just feel very strongly with the development of technology, that pharmacy is going to look very different in 10 years. So just starting and doing and cutting down on the Netflix and exchanging time. Outside I feel like the payoffs are really there. So Jamie, what do you see next for you? Did you when you sold this business? Did you have another idea in mind? Has that started coming to fruition? Or are you just really living in the moment and taking in the fact that you’ve built a successful business and been able to sell it at a price point that gives you some personal capital to do what you want what is next for you on the horizon?

Dr. Jamie Wilkey  34:43

So I’m gonna have the best summer of my life this summer with my kids and work very minimally and just really enjoy what I’ve built. I’ve always I’m such a high achiever and like always wanting to build the next thing and go, go go but I’m intentionally stepping back and like I just want to hang out with my kids and enjoy my garden and be outside all day, because I love being outside. I’m going to do that for this season. But then Corrie, this fall, my youngest goes to first grade. So for the first time in 13 years, all of my children will be at school all day. And there’s not like this huge interruption with like, right now he’s in half day kindergarten. So like, my whole day is broken up, I’m gonna focus and I want to build something big and awesome that I can really like sink my teeth into and like, be in it for the long run for pharmacy. And I’m actually really interested in communities, I feel like communities are the next. Not the next big thing, but like the next really effective way people learn and grow and change. As someone who’s built online courses, I know online courses are awesome, but almost no one finishes them. And it’s very up to like the person who’s doing it their impetus to finish. And I’m so intrigued with communities and bringing people together in like a private place that helps them grow and support each other because we’re all humans, and we just need connections with each other. And I don’t know, I’m, I’m figuring that out. But it’s gonna be something with a community and it’s gonna be awesome, Corrie.

Corrie Sanders 36:18

Yeah, I think that that it’s very natural to want human connection and human support. And I you are placed in a perfect position as someone who’s built a pharmacy community and a very niche area of what is that community look like and what worked well, and what didn’t work well, and being able to build off that I think will be a very successful starting point for you. So I’m excited to see where that goes. 

Dr. Jamie Wilkey  36:38

Well ,even if it’s not, it’s just going to be fun. Like, that’s how we figure it out. Like, and I almost want an element like, I need to doubt it’s going to work to do it anyway. Because if we you can’t wait until something feels like okay, this is absolutely a slam dunk, I think you have to have an element of like, is this more than I can chew? Is this a little too ambitious to be the right size of project for me or for you for anyone that like, if it feels so easy, then it’s, it’s, it’s probably not right for you like a little bit of growth and stretching and like that scariness of like, Oh, could I really do this is, is good for us and part of the thrill of pushing ourself.

 

Corrie Sanders 37:23

Jamie, do you think that that’s a characteristic that you always had? Or do you think that wanting to lean into growth and personal development was something that you realized is a priority once you took the transition into being an entrepreneur, because I’m thinking of the average pharmacist who is going to hear that and be like, I do not want that. I want something that’s a slam dunk, I want something that I know is going to be something that I can count on every month. I feel like pharmacists are just very risk averse in general. So do you feel like that’s always been in your nature? Or do you think that now you’ve had a taste of it? That’s what you want to do. And that’s part of your higher purpose and bigger purpose?

Dr. Jamie Wilkey  37:58

Well, I’m an oldest daughter, so I feel like it’s like baked into who I am. But also like seeing, really seeing what it’s like to earn money yourself, and how much you can earn and how consistent it can be that like, I just can’t go back to a job that’s out of my control. Again, like because I love not having risk. And I don’t feel like what I do is risky, it just takes time. So unless Netflix for me, it feels like the ultimate long term strategy that almost no one else is going to do because it takes work and a job is more comfortable. So like I I strongly believe I am like the least risky person. But I have a long timeline and willing to experiment because I know that like this is what it takes to succeed is like trying and being in public and doing in public. And most pharmacists don’t dare do that. It’s like the scariest thing to say, like, tell the world what you’re building. And I’m working with a couple of one on one clients right now. And that’s where some of them are at the point like okay, you’ve built your business, and I need you to create a social media post, just like on Facebook or Instagram, wherever you are, and just tell people what you’ve built. So they can celebrate with you. You’re not asking for like clients yet. You’re just saying like, Hey, I started a business like go female power. They won’t do it, Corrie! They’re like, oh my gosh, no, no, I’d rather just teach about diabetes than say I have a business because that feels salesy and like, I don’t want people to see me like, well, you have to be able to present yourself online to help people and it’s not salesy.

Corrie Sanders  38:21

Yes. And it’s in the world of digital digital business this is par for the course at this point.

Dr. Jamie Wilkey  39:45

Yeah. It’s par for the course!

Corrie Sanders 39:48

And I had a friend actually summarize something for me at one point, which is why I started looking into the transition of being an entrepreneur and working for myself as well. He does very well in something that’s not healthcare related, but He’s rewarded for how hard he works. And he told me as a high performer and a high achiever, I will never be in a salaried position because it would take away a lot of my drive. And I feel like when I heard that it was a lightbulb in my head of, I’m working so hard, and I’m not going to go anywhere, and a percentage increase of my income in a substantial amount of time. And so for me, that was such a lightbulb moment. And I think that’s kind of summarized by what you said is that I now that I make money for myself, and I know what that tastes like. That’s how I want to keep my income for years to come. So I also one of my last questions, Jamie is what other streams of income have you leaned into at this point in time? So I know that you have teaching experience, it sounds like you still have some coaching going on? Are you keeping your hands busy with anything else, aside from the pharmacogenomics business and Wealthy White Coat? 

Dr. Jamie Wilkey  40:47

So I have a couple streams of income that are pretty fun that I’ve built, kind of for myself, that is awesome that we hear about recurring revenue. And I’m like, Oh, I did that a few years ago. So now I get to enjoy it. So a couple of ways I earn money. Alright, I do have some one on one people that I work with that, like, have found me through through LinkedIn, and like we’ve just jivved, so I’m helping them one-on-one. It’s way less intensive than like, a full program, but it’s really fun and energizing for me. And for them. I also teach for the University of Florida, they have me help, help review, update their curriculum and proctor some of their courses within the precision medicine program in their school of pharmacy, which is awesome, it’s so fun. And my old boss, who he used to work at Walgreens. Now he works at the Student Health Center at the local college here, he asked if I would come Thursday afternoons from like two to 6pm to help fill in while he goes to choir practice. And I was like, You know what, I actually let my license lapse. So let’s see what it’s like to be a pharmacist and like, get a steady paycheck again. So I’ve actually started doing that again, just like for the fun of it. And it’s been really cool Corrie to have like W2 income and my own income all mixed together. That because there really is something to say about a job and like that you can clock in and clock out and earn a good salary. pharmacists have a good salary. And for me, I kind of ebb and flow with employment that I like like it, but then I can earn so much more myself. But then just that ease of like clocking in and out. So it’s been kind of fun to go back and forth. Because first I swore off pharmacy like I’ve done and now like, you know what, this is actually pretty fun in this environment with like these cute college students who just need birth control, Adderall, and antibiotics like, I could do this. So those are the main streams I have. I also do some advising and speaking but that’s anyway.

Corrie Sanders  42:44

But the underlying thing is that one, you can continue to pivot as a pharmacy entrepreneur. So you let your license lapse, who cares, you can go back and get it. And it’s not a huge deal. If you want to go back to something that you’ve known in the past with the W2 job, but to when you describe all these things, you’re saying it’s so fun, every single job you’ve taken on is so fun. And I think that it gets lost in this traditional education wheel where we go from undergrad to pharmacy school, to residency to certificates to additional training all these things you just continue on in this wheel. And it’s so much of it is performance based that you lose touch with why we really went into pharmacy, at least that’s how I feel is I got to a certain point where I just looked back and I was like, wow, I’ve done everything right. But it still feels wrong. And that is scary to me. And so I love that you’re at a point now where every job you’re describing, say it’s energizing for me, it’s fun, and that’s what ultimately keeps you happy and working overtime is that it’s this cliche sentiment where if you’re having fun, you never work a day in your life, totally get it. But that’s the freedom that you’ve given yourself is that work should be fun, it should be an energizing part of your life, not something that drains you for 40 hours a week. So I love hearing that you’re at that at that point. And I’ve got one more question and then I’ll ask where people can find you if they want to get in touch with you. But my last question is, what would you say to an aspiring pharmacy entrepreneur? So we shared those two lessons earlier of, you know, just starting and keeping moving. But if you’re sitting at the point of contemplating an idea within pharmacy practice and looking at something that’s in a non traditional setting, anything specific that you would share with that pharmacist?

Dr. Jamie Wilkey  44:25

I would say just get vocal and get online because you will stand out especially if you’re doing anything within any realm of health care, health care people are silent stalkers and scrollers. So if you have a voice and are consistent, you will stand out and you people will attract opportunities to you. And so the table start flipping instead of you like reaching out like Will anyone work with me? Will anyone want me? If you consistently stick to a topic and teach on it and just own it, people start coming out of the woodwork for you. And it’s just the best feeling that you don’t have to muscle your way into your own business, you find that like, just talk about something, help someone. And more opportunities come to you that like, oh, wow, I can work for this person or this person wants to hire me or like, it all comes together if you’re willing to like stand up and stand out, because few people are willing to do it. And so really like, that’s what magnetizes people to you, and get you out of this weird rat race of like applying to hundreds of jobs and getting more letters after your name, to feel like you’re the best candidate, don’t play that game. It’s an antiquated game, and you’re gonna get a position that you don’t want. And so even within entrepreneurship, like being willing to stand out, because you gotta stand out to be an entrepreneurship, and so just practice talking online every day, it might scare you to death, but really like that life skill, if you can get the hang of it. Like the right people will find you the world is your oyster. And just think of it as a skill and not as a personality trait that you either can or can’t do, because everything is learnable.

Corrie Sanders  46:01

I love that. Well, Jamie, this has been so great. I feel like we’ve covered a lot of ground. And you’ve done so much in the past decade that I think we broke it down into chunks that will be easily absorbed by our listeners. And this is coated with lots of different lessons. So thank you for being so vulnerable and transparent. You’ve been so gracious with your time and you do that online so well. Where can people find you if they want to learn more about what you’re doing? And about what you’ve done in the past or reach out to you independently? What’s the easiest way for our listeners to get in contact with you?

Dr. Jamie Wilkey  46:29

Oh, just on LinkedIn. That’s like, what social media I use. I love LinkedIn. You should be on LinkedIn. If you’re not, create an account. It’s the best thing you can do for your career. Find me there Jamie Wilkey LinkedIn, send me a DM I’ll talk to you. It’ll be fun. 

Corrie Sanders  46:45

That sounds great. Thank you again, Jamie Wilkie for being here. Congratulations on all your recent success. And we’re excited to see where you go in the next couple of years and even long term seeing where you end up.

Dr. Jamie Wilkey  46:57

 You too, Corrie! Thanks!

Tim Ulbrich  47:00

[DISCLAIMER] As we conclude this week’s podcast and important reminder that the content on this show is provided to you for informational purposes only and is not intended to provide and should not be relied on for investment or any other advice. Information in the podcast and corresponding materials should not be construed as a solicitation or offer to buy or sell any investment or related financial products. We urge listeners to consult with a financial advisor with respect to any investment. Furthermore, the information contained in our archive newsletters, blog posts and podcasts is not updated and may not be accurate at the time you listen to it on the podcast. Opinions and analyses expressed herein are solely those of your financial pharmacists unless otherwise noted, and constitute judgments as of the dates publish such information may contain forward looking statements, which are not intended to be guarantees of future events. Actual results could differ materially from those anticipated in the forward looking statements. For more information, please visit yourfinancialpharmacist.com/disclaimer. Thank you again for your support of the Your Financial Pharmacist Podcast. Have a great rest of your week.

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YFP 358: Top 6 Financial Moves to Make as a Mid-Career Pharmacist


YFP Co-Founder and Director of Financial Planning Tim Baker discusses six financial moves for mid-career pharmacists, including re-evaluating the vision for the financial plan.

Episode Summary

Tim Ulbrich is joined by YFP Co-Founder and Director of Financial Planning at YFP, Tim Baker to discuss various financial planning strategies for mid-career pharmacists, including resetting the vision for the financial plan, prioritizing retirement planning and emergency funds, and reevaluating, reviewing and updating insurance policies.

Regularly reviewing and adjusting these funds to account for the various life changes ensures that policies align with current financial goals and circumstances. Tim and Tim also address the importance of having those uncomfortable conversations, such as end-of-life care and inheritance to avoid potential legal and financial issues in the future.

About Today’s Guest

Tim Baker is the Co-Founder and Director of Financial Planning at Your Financial Pharmacist. Founded in 2015, YFP is a fee-only financial planning firm and connects with the YFP community of 12,000+ pharmacy professionals via the Your Financial Pharmacist Podcast podcast, blog, website resources and speaking engagements. 

Tim attended the United States Military Academy majoring in International Relations and branching Armor. After his military career, he worked as a logistician with a major retailer and a construction company. After much deliberation, Tim decided to make a pivot in his career and joined a small independent financial planning firm in 2012. In 2016, he launched his own financial planning firm Script Financial and in 2019 merged with Your Financial Pharmacist. Tim now lives in Columbus, Ohio with his wife (Shay), three kids (Olivia, Liam and Zoe), and dog (Benji).

Key Points from the Episode

  • Financial moves for mid-career pharmacists, including resetting financial goals. [0:00]
  • Financial planning, goal setting, and prioritizing life ambitions. [3:54]
  • Emergency funds and savings goals, including rechecking amounts and locations. [9:17]
  • Emergency funds and retirement planning for mid-career pharmacists. [14:34]
  • Retirement planning and nest egg calculation. [16:46]
  • Social Security benefits and retirement planning for pharmacists. [22:43]
  • Updating estate plans for mid-career individuals. [29:13]
  • Financial planning for aging parents. [33:39]
  • Financial planning for mid-career pharmacists, including insurance checkups and estate planning. [37:48]
  • Insurance planning for pharmacists, including long-term care and property casualty assessments. [41:17]

Episode Highlights

“And I think the other thing is that things change. I think checking up on your financial plan is really, really important.” -Tim Baker [5:08]

“I think it’s really important to kind of recast the vision, recast the organization of your financial plan and go from there.” – Tim Baker [5:52]

“I think one of the things that I would challenge people who are mid-career, from a goal setting perspective is, are you doing the things that make you whole or that you’re passionate about?” – Tim Baker [6:28]

“So, you know, I think being critical and actually like slowing down and saying, is this what I want to do. And then using the resources, the time that you have, the dollars that you have, to kind of right that ship, and because again, we’re here for a very finite amount of time. And it goes by quickly, and it sounds very cliche, but it’s true.” – Tim Baker [8:08]

“I typically say that the estate plan is really important, really, for anybody, But particularly for people that have a spouse, a house, or mouths to feed. So if you have those things, and you don’t have documents in place, I think that that’s probably the biggest thing that we need to look at.” – Tim Baker [32:58]

Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode

Episode Transcript

Tim Ulbrich  00:00

Hey everybody, Tim Ulbrich here and thank you for listening to the YFP Podcast where each week we strive to inspire and encourage you on your path towards achieving financial freedom. This week, Tim Baker joins us back on the mic to talk through six financial moves to make as a mid career pharmacist, we discussed the importance of resetting the vision for the financial plan, how to determine whether or not you’re on track for retirement, gaps to look for in your estate planning and insurance coverage, and much more. For more information and details on each one of these areas, go to yourfinancialpharmacist.com/midcareer. That’s one word again yourfinancialpharmacist.com/midcareer. 

Tim Ulbrich  00:37

Before we jump into this week’s episode, I have a hard truth for you to hear. Making a six figure income is not a financial plan. Yes, you’ve worked hard to get where you are today. Yes, you’re earning a good income. But have you ever wondered, am I on track to retire? How do I prioritize and fund all of these competing financial goals that I have? How do I plan financially for big upcoming life events and changes such as moving, having a child, changing jobs, getting married or retiring? Or perhaps why am I not as far along financially at this point in my career as I thought I would be? The answer may be that your six figure income is not a financial plan. As a pharmacist, you have an incredible tool in your toolbox: your salary. But without a vision and a plan that good income will only go so far. That’s in part why we started Your Financial Pharmacist. At YFP, we support pharmacists at every stage of their careers to take control of their finances, reach their financial goals, and build wealth through comprehensive fee-only financial planning and tax planning. Our team of certified financial planners and our CPA works with pharmacists all across the country to help our clients set their future selves up for success while living their rich lives today. If you’re ready to learn more about how Your Financial Pharmacist can support you on your financial journey, visit your financialpharmacist.com/learn. Again, that’s your financial pharmacists.com/learn. Alright, let’s jump into today’s show. 

Tim Ulbrich  02:05

Tim Baker, good to have you back on the show.

Tim Baker  02:07

Good to be back. Tim. How’s it going? 

Tim Ulbrich  02:09

Good. It’s been a while official congrats on the baby. I know you’re off for a little while. But we’re glad to have you back on the mic. 

Tim Baker  02:17

Yeah, thanks for thanks for hosting, it’s trying to get back in the swing of things with baby here. Sleep’s at a premium. So, it’s all good.

Tim Ulbrich  02:28

Well, this week, we’re talking about moves that mid-career pharmacists should be making things that they should be thinking about. And really whether someone is early in their journey, you know, these are things to be thinking ahead of or those that are actually in this season. Hopefully, this is more of a checklist type of episode where you can go through different parts of the financial plan, or perhaps tune up or look back at some of these items. Tim, it dawned on me though, as we’re preparing for this episode of like, that’s us mid-career, you know, it’s really that that phase where you start to feel like, Hey, we’ve kind of checked off some of those basic foundational items. But there’s this whole other set of issues and things that we need to be thinking about going into the future. So for better or for worse, here we are in the middle of our career, as well. And we’re excited to talk through these six moves that mid-career pharmacists should be making in each one of these we have covered at length, if not once, maybe twice, or three times on the episode before. So we’ll make sure to mention that when we get to these individual items and link to those things in the show notes as well. Tim, I think it makes sense that we start number one, really with the goals. You know, this is an opportunity, I think to reset the vision for the financial plan, there often is a lot of transition that can be happening at this phase, you know, this might be the time where people have kids are getting a little bit older, maybe beginning to think about them moving out of the house, we obviously have to be thinking about taking care of ourselves. Maybe we have elderly parents that we’re trying to prioritize as well. So just a lot of transition, I think an opportunity to take a step back and really look at the vision and the goals for the financial plan and how those have changed over time.

Tim Baker  04:05

Yeah, I would package these, I would actually package this together with like, what is the balance sheet look like? And then what is the vision going forward? So you know, we kind of look at this, you know, when we work with clients as a get organized and kind of a goal setting, you know, as a one two punch, and this is typically where, Tim, when a pharmacist asked me a question of Hey, should I do X or Y? I say it depends.  A lot of it depends on what is what is the financial picture look like for you? And then what does a wealthy life look like for you both today and in the future. And for everyone that’s going to be different. So, that to me is where that answer comes from. So yeah, like I think in prepping for this episode, Tim, I kind of learned you know, two things or realized two things that I think is really important to say out loud. One is just like a lot of stuff when I was looking at my you know, I was looking at my insurance stuff in my in my nest egg calculation, some of the things that we’ll talk about in this episode. It’s just a lot of moving pieces. And it’s a, and it’s changed a lot over the years. So that’s, that’s the first thing. And I think the other thing is, like, you know, this thing, things change, I think having, you know, checking up on this is really, really important. So, when we look at, like, the, when we look at the balance sheet, again, if you haven’t looked at your balance sheet in a long time, I think it’s really important, it’s not necessarily necessarily something that we feel in our day to day, yeah. But if you, you know, if you if you put your head down, and you’re working, and you’re raising a family or doing whatever you’re doing, and, you know, two or three years later go by, you can actually see the progress that, you know, has been made, right, so you can see, you know, how your assets, you know, been built up, how have you How have your liabilities been paid down? Or not, you know, do you have a different set of, you know, versus if it’s was it student loans in the past the past and now its a HELOC, or something like that. So I think it’s really important to kind of recast the vision recast the, you know, the organization of your financial plan and go from going from there. From the vision perspective, it’s, it’s laughable when you think about, you know, like, when I, you know, had these conversations with myself and my wife, you know, even three or four years ago, and then what that looks like today, like, like, and you don’t sense that, but like, when you when you actually look back, and you kind of memorialize, hey, in 2019 pre-pandemic, this is kind of our viewpoint, this is what we wanted to do. And then we look at that today, it’s vastly different. So I think, like, you know, one of the things that, that I would, you know, challenge people that are mid career, you know, from a goal setting perspective is, are you doing the things that, like, make you whole, or that you’re passionate about? You know, like, I was joking around with my team over the weekend that I kind of felt like an Uber driver, because I was driving to soccer practice and swim practice, soccer practice again, and swim practice again. Which is great, like, I love that I love you know, you know, you know, seeing my kids, you know, do well on their sports and their activities. But, you know, though conversation that I had with my wife over the weekend was like, are like, Are we are we good? Are we on like the track that we want to be on and kind of checking in with and sometimes that’s a check in with yourself, some that’s a check in with a spouse, sometimes it’s a check in with like, a close advisor, like a financial planner. And I think it’s really important to do that, because again, you can put your head down, and you know, live, you know, be living your life, but then, you know, you’re doing that vicariously through your kids or, or whatever, and not actually take the time to do the things that you’re passionate about. And sometimes, you know, again, your own goals. And ambitions are kind of taking a backseat to your kids, which is a it’s a natural thing. But at the end of the day, like there typically is enough to go around, like we can carve out time, we can carve out resources to do the things that you want to do whatever that is. So I think it’s really important, you know, as you are mid-career, and I think this is where, you know, people like to talk about, like a midlife crisis, because they kind of get caught in the rat race, and they’re like, this is not really the life that I want to live. So, you know, I think it’s that, you know, that self, you know, being being critical and actually like slowing down and saying, is this what I want to do. And then using the resources, you know, the time that you have, the dollars that you have, to kind of right that ship, and because, again, we’re here for a very finite amount of time. And it goes by quick, and it sounds very cliche, but it’s, it’s true. And I think you can I always talk about this, like, you know, that whole that sense of being on autopilot. I’ve worked at jobs where, you know, like, my commute to the office in the morning was in darkness, I would you know, I would drive there 30 minutes, I wouldn’t remember that drive, and then you back was in darkness, I would get in my car, and 30 minutes would go by and I’m home. And I don’t remember any of that. And that’s, that’s like an analogy for life is that if you’re not actually slowing down and think about is this what I want to do that’s important. So that’s just my life planning hat. You know, are we are we putting the first things first are we doing, you know, the things that we want to do and making sure that we’re, we have a plan and we’re being intentional for that. 

Tim Ulbrich  09:16

I love the example you gave of you know how for you and Shay, your family, right short period of time, the goals can look very different, and why it’s so important to be looking at these regularly and talking about them together to have a third party, you know, kind of help, whether that’d be a plan or someone else. I was even thinking as you shared that, you know, for Jess and I, when you did the planning with the two of us how helpful it was when we would get together to flash up the goals to say, hey, yeah, a year, a year ago, you guys said this is important. Like, is it still important? If so, like, what what are we doing? What are we doing to kind of move this forward? And ultimately, like, where are the funds, right? If it requires funds to do that, and that’s so important. You know, you and I had a very similar season of life where, you know, to the point you gave of the weekend and being the Uber driver We’re like, the days and the months are flying by to really have that mechanism to stop, pause, slow down and remind ourselves of like, are we running the path? Are we running the race that we want to be running? And we’re not gonna get it right all the time, right balance in every season of life, but to have some built in mechanism to not just set those goals, but also to refresh and to look at those periodically. 

Tim Baker  10:23

Yeah, absolutely. 

Tim Ulbrich  10:24

All right, number two on our list is savings. And we’re gonna talk about a few different areas. Here. We’ll talk briefly about the emergency fund, and an opportunity to recheck where we’re at with that, we’ll briefly talk about retirement. Again, we’ve talked about all these at length, we’ll reference other episodes, and then we’ll touch on some kids college stuff as well. Tim, let’s start with the emergency fund and a recheck. I just talked on Episode 357, last week about five questions that we need to be asking ourselves related to the emergency fund. So make sure you go back and check out that episode. But I think this is one of those areas that where we set the emergency fund maybe early on in our career, and then we don’t think about, wow, a lot has changed, we really got to relook at is the amount that we have there sufficient? And how does this fit in with the rest of the plan? 

Tim Baker  11:09

It’s one of those things where yeah, it’s kind of a forgotten, forgotten thing. And, you know, you know, what we really want to do is check in and make sure that you know, what’s in there is appropriate, and, you know, are there things that we can do to, you know, to, to improve it. So, you know, for for a emergency fund, what we’re looking for is three to six months of non discretionary monthly expenses. So these are expenses that are gonna go out the door, regardless of if we work or not. So things like, you know, a mortgage and insurance premiums and utilities and a food bill. So, unfortunately, we tend to get to that number, we have to actually look at spending data and understand like, what that looks like, and then, you know, we kind of look at, you know, what is what is discretionary? What are things that are non discretionary, and we add up all the non discretionary if we have, you know, two incomes, we multiply that by three, if we have one income, we multiply that by six for six months, and then and then that’s our number. For a lot of our clients. You know, it typically can be I think, in a, I would say, anywhere between 15 and $50,000 is what is what the number is, um, so I think like, you know, and this is something that that Shay, I looked at recently, and I think, for us, because of three kids and you know, daycare and all that kind of stuff, it’s, it’s crept up, and I’ve kind of tried to, you know, the interest that I that I accumulate in my high yield, or  I do, I do a combination of a high yield savings account. And then like, a laddered CD that I do every quarter, like a year CD for every quarter. So I have a q1, q2, q3, q4 that I just renew, and I kind of let those ride and I’m actually adding more money, both to the high yield, and the, and the CDs as we go here. But I, the only reason I knew to do that was to actually look at the spending, and it’s kind of crept up, you know, just because of family of, you know, probably the last time I did it, we were a family of three, now we’re a family of five. So I think that’s important to do. And again, like, there are so many people that I talked to that they’re like, Okay, this brokerage account, this, this taxable investment account, that is my emergency fund, that is not an emergency fund, it’s, it’s, you know, if you’re investing in it, and you can see volatility, that’s not what we’re trying to do. So I think having you know, the right amount, and then the location is going to be really important. And to get the right amounts, typically, looking at the budget where you’re at today, and again, like I don’t look at the kids swim or, or soccer or other activities as a discretionary as a, that’s, that’s a discretionary thing. So if times get tough, we, you know, try to try to cut that. So I think even, you know, examining what is, you know, what should be in there and what shouldn’t, is important, but, you know, to me, it’s, it’s a little bit of nails on chalkboard, right Tim, because I don’t want to keep cash, I want to get that into the market and get work. And so I need enough to get us through a tough spot. But then also know that, you know, for me, I want to get money into mortgage and a lot of people typically, you know, later in mid career and beyond, they’ll they’ll start because they have an asset like the house, they’ll even use something like a HELOC as like an even deeper reserve. Yeah. So to have access to a HELOC, or something like that is going to be important that I’ve seen people use as a mechanism to, you know, to safely and I wouldn’t say cheaply because of where rates are, but somewhat cheaply access cash if needed, and not necessarily tie up a ton of money in a checking error, high yield savings account, I should say. 

Tim Ulbrich  14:33

I like the hack that you mentioned. And yes, I do the same thing where you know, any any earnings on a high yield savings, we just kind of dumped back in the emergency letter, I let it ride right. And the idea being that’s going to help kind of keep pace at some level with inflation, maybe not fully, but to your point, it doesn’t cover those big jumps, right. So like now we’re a family of five instead of a family of three or, you know, we bought an investment property and we’ve got to be thinking about that or we moved homes and you know, mortgage payments went up and so those kind of big moves, where all of a sudden, you know, that emergency fund might go from that 15 to that 30, 35. Are we looking at that periodically.

Tim Baker  15:09

And for you, Tim is probably like your food bill, right? Oh, pre preteens? Like, like, that’s gonna that’s that’s like No, that’s no joke, you know like when you, even Olivia. Olivia is going to be 10 this year and she’s a swimmer. I mean, she eats I feel like as much as I do. And you know, when you when you think about that, that’s, that’s gonna move down quite a bit. So you know, it’s it definitely adds up. And at the end of the day, the emergency fund is there for that rainy day when, when when you need it and just making sure that’s properly funded is going to be important to kind of give you that peace of mind.

Tim Ulbrich  15:42

The second part of savings Tim, I want to touch on as we work through these six different moves for mid-career pharmacists is, you know, I think this is a natural time where we ask ourselves, Am I on track with retirement? Right? And, and this is a season where when we talk with pharmacists mid-career, you know, the visual I have is you’re getting hit in every direction, right? You maybe kids expenses, kids college has grown, we’ll talk about that a little bit. You’ve got this pressure facing you on retirement, you might be caring for elderly parents, you know, perhaps there’s debt still hanging around, we’re working through student loans or other things. There’s, there’s all these different pressures and headwinds, and naturally, that retirement piece made maybe wasn’t a top priority for a while. And all of a sudden, we get to this point where previously we couldn’t visualize retirement now we can start to and it’s like, Am I on track? And I know, we covered this in Episode 272. How much is enough? We’ll link to that in the show notes. So people can dig deeper, but just at a high level, you know, some some tips or some thoughts for folks that are asking this question of, Hey, am I on track? How much is enough? When it comes to retirement? 

Tim Baker  16:45

This is such a, this is such a hard one. Because like, I’ll ask like prospective clients, like, Hey, do you feel like you’re on track to meet like your goal for retirement? And if you’re talking to someone in their 30s 40s 50s? I would say even in your 50s, it can be somewhat nebulous anytime it’s like a decade or more out. And typically, that the answer I get is like, you know, Tim, I really have no idea. Which is, I think, problematic, especially if we’re trying to, like, you know, build out a plan. So that’s obviously something that we can fix. But also, it’s kind of that default of like, well, like the 401k, you know, company or the 401k that I have, they have a calculator that says I’m on track. And I’m like, I just don’t know how they calculate that. And I almost feel like, all the compliance things that, Tim, that we have. So it’s almost like irresponsible, yeah, to, again, they’re looking at it very much from it, but people don’t necessarily know that, you know, it’s very much a vacuum. I think that like, the problem with like, Am I on track for retirement is that there’s so many variables that go into it, there’s so much time that goes into it, you know, and I always talked about this, like, when we, when I first started working as a financial planner, I remember working with my previous firm, and it’s like, you know, we would do financial planning by hand, and we would do a time value money calculation. And we would say, Hey, Tim, hey client, you know, your, your, your, what you need for retirement is $3.1 million. And we’d be like this exact number. And then we’ll kind of go on to like, the next thing, I’ll make sure you’re doing this. And it’s like, it just never connected. It was almost like this disassociated moving, because you’d like to look at like what the client had, which might be three or $400,000. And you’re like, I need to, like 10x this in 20 years, or 15 years. And there’s so many people that come back to me that when they start and then they’re like four or five years, they’re like, like, damn, Tim, like, actually, my assets I’ve actually grown like, I almost didn’t believe you. And it’s still hard to even to see that, you know, the progress to get to that, that millionaire level. But I think it’s really important. And so like, I took that, as a financial planner, I would look at the clients, like their eyes would kind of like gloss over because they’re like, that doesn’t mean anything to me. And I can’t we build up this nest egg calculator that basically goes through. And I did it recently for Shay and I, you know, what’s your current age? What’s your target? You know, so how many more years do you have left in the workforce? How long do you expect to live? Which is again, that’s one of the hardest, you know, that’s one of the risks in retirement is like longevity risk, like, are you gonna live really long or not? So again, that’s a little bit of a crapshoot. So we kind of make make some assumptions there. Social Security kind of has an idea of when they think that you’re gonna pass away, what your current retirement savings is with kind of think of it as your present value and your time value money. And then what your current calculate your current income is and then what that kind of projects into what you need for retirement. So we make some assumptions on how is your current assets actually invested? So for a lot of people that I see at least it’s in my opinion, too conservative, especially mid you know, if you follow the rules of thumb of, hey, if you’re, you know, if you’re 40 years old, you take 110 minus 40, your equity, equity amount should be 70%. And then the other 30 should be in bonds, I think that is wrong. But then we do some, you know, asset assumptions when you’re actually in retirement, so might be more conservative. And that kind of gets down to the total need. And then you have to factor in things like social security. So I pulled my Social Security, I think we’ll talk about that in a second. And then like, what does that mean, in terms of what do I need to actually save today? So it’s, it’s the idea here is to take this big number, whether it’s 3.1, 3.6, 2 million, 4 million, and actually break it down to a number that I can digest. So like, if you say, if I’m, if I’m the client, and I say, hey, you know, if I’m talking to a client, I’m like, Hey, you’re putting in 10%, for you to actually get on track to retire by 65. To live to 95, whatever that is, you need to go from 10% to 15%. Like, I can track to that. And also, you know, so that actually is a tangible thing, that’s a, that’s a digestible thing that I can do versus just saying, we need $3.1 and we kind of just are like, it’s a hope and a prayer, right. So it’s not, it’s not a perfect system. Because like, when I look at my own nest egg calculation, you know, I’m maxing out my 401. K. And let’s assume that I’m going to be doing that for the next 29 years, if I retire at 70, which, that’s a, I don’t know, I don’t know if that’s going to be the case. I’m hoping that’s the case. But so there’s, there’s, there’s some assumptions that we have to make to make, to make it kind of come to life. And I think the next level of this, Tim, was kind of going through some simulations. So if I were to, you know, if I were to, you know, take part of my portfolio and purchase x, or if I were to, you know, go and go down to part time, or, you know, do something else, you could actually run scenarios, if I, if I buy my Mountain House 10 years earlier, there’s some Monte Carlo analysis that will actually affect, you know, show you how it affects your success rate with your with your retirement. And I think that’s kind of the next level stuff. But for a lot of people, it’s where am I at? What are the things that I’m that I’m doing today? How can I tweak those things to get a better outcome, and that could be contribution rate, that could be my allocation, that can be a variety of things. So I think that’s important to kind of break down and really see, you know, because the more the longer that we wait to kind of effect change here, especially if it’s negative, the steeper that gets, right. So when you’re, when you’re early in your career, you know, a tweak here there can really have monumental changes, the closer you get to that retirement, just the the steeper that climb is and the harder it is to kind of meet goals. And that’s where you have to start, then potentially taking a haircut on lifestyle and retirement, or you know, the amount of time that you have to work etc. 

Tim Ulbrich  22:43

What I love about the nest egg exercise is, you know, going through it for Jess and I, again, just a reminder, with all these things, we’re told it’s not a one and done, right. So if you do a nest egg when you’re, you know, 45, there’s assumptions, we’re building into all of these types of calculations, both in terms of the mathematical assumptions, but also what you want. And you know, you mentioned the different scenarios, and that can change and probably will change over time. So revisiting this periodically is so important, but it really moves I often hear people talking about retirement as like a hope, wish or dream, meaning like, I hope I can retire by 58, or 67, or whatever, or, you know, I would love if I could potentially work part time at some point in the future. And it’s like, hey, yes, those assumptions can change, many of them will change over time. But we can put a number to these into your point, let’s get it down to what do we need to be doing on a monthly basis, because these numbers do seem scary. And you can see, kind of the peace of mind that comes when you walk through these calculations with people when you start with those big numbers, three, four or 5 million. And then you get down to that monthly even if we don’t love the monthly number, when we factor in employer matches, other things, savings we already have. We’ll talk about social security here in a moment. It’s like, oh, okay, like, we can work with that, because we can put our arms around it and start to figure out, can we build that into the rest of the planet, a monthly basis. So, so important, especially for those who are mid-career listening. If you’ve done this before, you know, revisit this, you know, we’d love to have opportunity to work with you on the financial planning side, if you haven’t done it before need to revisit this as well. But something we definitely need to be updating. And looking at periodically. Let’s move to number three, which is really looking at our Social Security benefits and the projected benefits, which I think fits so well into the how much is enough calculation. And, you know, this is an opportunity to really look at our [email protected] to look at our statement, our projected benefits. I think a lot of people probably aren’t necessarily familiar with these tools that are out there. And to begin to figure out and build some assumptions of, hey, if I have social security benefits, what might those be? And then certainly we can project down if people are worried about the future of the benefit. I’m sure you’ll talk about that as well. But thoughts here on on kind of revisiting or looking at the social security piece? 

 

Tim Baker  24:57

So if you go to ssa.gov Like if you have haven’t done this, I would encourage you, especially if you’re mid-career just to kind of see what your social security statement looks like. So to me, that’s really important to kind of get a sense of, and again, like, I think a lot of people, when they, when they think about security, it’s kind of an eyeroll of like, uh, that won’t be there, when I’m when I’m ready to retire, or it’s going to be greatly diminished. You know, I would, what I believe is that, you know, Social Security is one of those things where so many people rely on it to actually survive in, you know, it’s kind of a hand, um, you know, unfortunately, we’re kind of like a hand to mouth in terms of like, a lot of people don’t do a great job of saving themselves, especially, you know, no offense to Baby Boomers, where there was pensions and things like that pensions, and Social Security could go a long way, in terms of retirement, that day is done, you know, so when we moved away from pensions, and more to 401k, the onus has really shifted from the employer to the employee, to make sure that we’re doing what we need to do. And again, social security still there. But there’s lots of, you know, press about, you know, will be viable, and, you know, will it go bankrupt? My sense is that, you know, it will be there, Tim, when we retire it at 70. But it’s kind of one of those things where it’s, it’s unknown what that benefit would be, and again, maybe when we retire, you know, it’s not 70, it’s 75, or something like that, because of a variety of reasons. But the I think the big thing here is to pull your statement. And then when I look at mine, it actually shows me, you know, what my personalized monthly retirement benefits would be, if I started from age 62. So right now, my my benefits $2,076 or if I wait until age 70 and actually get the, you know, credits $3,777. The big thing with Social Security that doesn’t get enough play is that it’s inflation protected. So when we had that big jump into inflation the year before last, yeah, everyone’s payment went up, I think 8.9% or whatever it was your over a year, that’s huge. Because if you’re thinking about, you know, building a retirement paycheck, most of the things that you have, most of the income streams are not inflation protected. So every time, you know, we go through bouts of inflation, you’re you know, you know, the checks, the checks that you have running it coming in, are not going to account for the fact that, you know, your your grocery bill went from 100 bucks per month to $140, just because of where that’s at. So Social Security, you know, plays a part in that. So I think the big thing here is to try to check, you know, when you pull your statement, you can actually see your work year, and what your earnings tax for security were from, you know, I’m looking back from, like, 1991 to present day. So I think to make sure that that’s accurate, that’s, that’s going to be a big thing. And again, like, I think the sooner that you can kind of look at this and kind of get a sense of where you’re at. And then and then look at the you know, look at the the the retirement calculator that’s there, you know, if you if you retire early, versus if your full retirement age, you know, for us, it’s going to be 67. Or if you delay it out to age 70, which to me, I think a lot of people should really look at doing and if you have a plan, you know, before the kind of the knee jerk was like, get the money when you can get it, but that’s a that’s a mistake. And a lot of people are understanding now that it is a mistake. So doing a proper analysis. Again, it’s kind of a microcosm of your of your financial plan is, you know, inventory. So get organized in terms of what does the statement look like? What are the goals in retirement, and then how to properly deploy this, this inflation protected income stream, I think is going to be a big part. Now, for pharmacists, you know, your it might be 25%, 20% of your retirement paycheck, whereas, you know, the typical American it’s, it’s north of 50%. So but I think making sure that we’re positioning ourselves from, you know, to ensure that the income is correct. And then the basically the way that we collect the benefit is going to be in line with your overall retirement picture and financial plan.

Tim Ulbrich  29:13

And I think once we have that number, and again, we can adjust up or down, as you mentioned before as we’re running assumptions, but we can then build that into the nest egg calculation as well and see how that impacts where we’re at on a on a need for a monthly savings. Number four, Tim, on our list of six mid-career pharmacist moves to be considering would be the estate plan. We’ve talked about the estate plan in detail on the on the podcast episode 310. dusting off the estate plan. We’ll link to that in the show notes. But this time well, you and I were just talking about this last week. You know with your new baby in the house right there’s an opportunity to update documents we haven’t yet done our updates with with our youngest who soon to be five, so we’ve got to make sure his name is present, although he’s covered in language, but his actual name isn’t present in the documents. So I think again, and talk to us through why there’s an opportunity mid-career to really be updating these documents or perhaps for some even even establishing these for the first time. 

Tim Baker  30:10

It’s probably, you know, I can say this being a ginger, but it’s probably the redheaded stepchild of like the financial plan. It’s, it’s ignored. And unless you’re military, a lot of the clients that are coming through the door really don’t have an estate plan in place. And one of the things that we implemented to kind of really combat this and really supercharge our ability to support clients is we have a an estate planning solution now that we, when we work with clients, if you don’t have a will, a living will, and well trust, if that’s needed, we can actually get those documents in place for whatever state that you live in country, which I think is awesome. So you know, it’s one thing to kind of, you know, say, Hey, Tim, this is what you need something to actually like, walk side by side with you and get the documents in place to make sure you’re covered. So I look at this really from a from from to, you know, to? Well, I would say it’s one big perspective, just change, right. So like, you know, if you think about, you know, maybe when you were, you know, early career to where you’re at now, for some people like could be different relationships, like there’s horror stories about people that are leaving money to like an ex. So I think it’s really important to kind of do a beneficiary check to make sure that the money is going to the right people, you know, Shay is going to be my primary beneficiary for like, a lot of the things that I have. But then right now, it’s like, Liam, my, my, my, or Olivia, my daughter, and Liam my son who are the contingent beneficiary, so if something were to happen to both, it likely would go to the kids, so like Zoe, or our newest baby has to kind of be in on that. Or it could be to like a trust, you know, a trust that is for the benefit of the kids, which is probably the better way to go with minor children. So to me, it’s more of again, looking at the the relationships, whether they’re, you know, out with the old in with the new, or, you know, brand new in terms of kids to make sure that the documents that you had in place clearly reflect your wishes today could even be things about, you know, bequesting, or, yeah, hey, I want to leave, you know, money to my alma mater, or to my cousin Fred, or things like that, that that’s a really reflects the things that you want to do. But also, you know, to, to ensure that from a protection perspective, you know, if you have dependents, they’re there, they’re taken care of, in a sense that, you know, if you were gone, or you can speak for yourself, the documents are that are in place, do that justice. So, for a lot of people mid career, it is adjusting what they have, or it could be it says that, that thing that’s been neglected that you’re like, I’m gonna get to it, I’m gonna get to, I’m gonna get to it, and you have it. You know, what, when I’m talking when I’m talking to prospective clients, and I bring up the fact that we can do this, that like, perks them up, because I know, it’s important. They know, it’s like, uh, I gotta find an attorney, or I gotta find some sort of solution. We got that covered. And to me that alone, I think, especially if you’re, you’re, if you’re a family, or if you you know, I typically say that the estate plan is really important, really, for anybody, particularly, particularly for people that have a spouse, a house, or mouths to feed, right. So if you have those things, and you don’t have documents in place, I think that that’s probably the biggest thing that we need to look at. You know, it’s important to get, you know, a plan for debt, it’s important to get your your nest egg and a plan for your assets and retirement planning. But this is really going to be important to shore up and make sure you’re good to go in the event that something were to happen to you. And again, it’s one of those things like, oh, that won’t happen to me, it will happen to somebody else. And then eventually, you’re going to be that that’s someone else. So not to be morbid, but you know, I think it’s important to cross those t’s and dot the i’s with regard to the state plan. 

Tim Ulbrich  33:39

I mean, the reality is just like we’ll talk about in the final item number six on the insurance side, like it’s not fun to think about, right? So it’s easy, but been there myself, it’s easy to kind of drag your feet and let this be the call to action to either update, take a fresh look at those or get those documents created. Number five on our list of six mid-career pharmacists moves to make tip is probably one that a lot of people maybe aren’t thinking about, again, not necessary, the most comfortable thing to be doing would be some of the financial conversations with aging parents, you know, I think it’s common that we see mid-career pharmacists that are entering into a new stage of caring for elderly parents sometimes that, you know, could be a time investment that they need to factor in, that could be a financial investment. And for some, you know, that might be Hey, this is an expense that we need to be thinking about caring for our elderly parents or others. It might be, Hey, do they have the documents, the right documents in place that we just talked about? And do we have an awareness, understanding and transparency into that information? Which admittedly, is a very hard and awkward conversation to have no matter which way we’re looking at it. So thoughts here on some of the financial conversations with aging parents? 

Tim Baker  34:44

So I think this can be both from an estate planning perspective, but also like a retirement perspective. So it’s very common for you know, our clients, you know, maybe who are you know, first generation immigrant that you know, they basically Say, Tim I am the retirement plan for my my parents. Right. So I think like building that into their into the our clients plan is gonna be really important because that’s, that’s part of their culture. That’s part of the goal. That’s I think that’s important. I think beyond that, you know, is more of the estate planning stuff. So I look at this as we have to, we have to secure our own estate plan. So our clients estate plan, but then what are the what are some of the things that can negatively affect, you know, and I’m talking negatively in terms of like financial, and maybe some of the legal and logistics, it could be the your parent, like elderly parents that don’t necessarily have a sound estate plan. So whether that’s, you know, we’ve talked about this, what’s the book “Mom and Dad, We Need to Talk” about some of those some of those conversations or some of those instances where, because of a lack of estate planning and foresight foresight, it’s negatively affecting the child’s plan or finances or time because they’re, they’re suing for conservativeship or you know, there, there’s just things that you’re don’t expect. So this is a tricky thing, because again, like I grew up in a household where we really talk about money that much, so it’s kind of a touchy subject. So how do you how do you go about having those conversations, and have, you know, have access to the detail that you need, but not being respectful, and not necessarily prying where you know, that it were, your parents made me feel uncomfortable, but they’re adult conversations that need to be had, because if you wait too long, then again, you’re you’re putting yourself in a position where you either can’t care or provide, you know, the support that you need to a parent, and it can ultimately, you know, negatively affect your own plan in terms of your, you know, financial resources, but also time. So, I think this is one of these things where, again, whether this is a family conversation around the holidays, or it’s a, an email or a letter, or it’s, Hey, this is a shared document, even give me passwords, and you know, I’m not going to access it until the time is needed to be able to do the things. But, you know, if something were to happen to your parents today, like, Do you know how to log into their different accounts? And what is the what’s the plan, and that can be a very uncomfortable conversation for some people, and for some people it’s not, like this, what it is, so I think, just to have that conversation, and understand where to go, what are the proper documents? What are the accounts? I think if you can do that before, you know, there’s capacity issues, or whatever, I think that’s gonna be really important. So that’s, that’s the big thing here. 

Tim Ulbrich  37:47

And that’s one of things I appreciate so much, Tim, about Cameron Huddleston book, you mentioned, “Mom and Dad, We Need to Talk” is, it does provide a nice kind of third party and she’s got some great suggestions in that book of specific questions to ask, how to ask them how to ignite the conversations. And, you know, I think having that third party resource, even if you’re referencing that of, hey, I read this book, and you know, got me thinking that we should have a conversation and, you know, likely it’s not gonna be everything addressed in one conversation, but it opens up the door. Sure, it’s gonna be uncomfortable, but for, as you mentioned, for some people, maybe not depending on how they grew up around money, but so important that we understand, you know, what, what is the potential financial impact, as you mentioned earlier, for some if that means caring financially for the parents. And even if that’s not the case, there’s just a lot to consider in the estate planning process that we want to make sure that we’re honoring the wishes and aware of what’s going on as well. So number six, our final item on the six moves to consider for financial moves for mid-career pharmacists, Tim, is an insurance checkup. Again, not the most exciting part of the plan to be thinking about here, I’m talking about term life insurance, long term disability, perhaps beginning to think about long term care insurance as well. I know we’ve talked about term life, long term disability, even long term care extensively on the show before. Is this an opportunity to reevaluate those policies, you know, I’m thinking of this situation just as one, where let’s say somebody in their early 30s, bought a 20 year term. Now they’re at the end of their late 40s. And they’re looking at that saying, hey, the terms coming up here in the next, you know, five, six years. So talk to us about how we might look at the insurance part of the plan here as a mid-career pharmacist. 

Tim Baker  39:25

I think like, in the absence of like, a, like an actual insurance calculation, you know, a lot of people will use a rule of thumb for term insurance of like, 10 to 15 times income, which again, that could have changed over the years. If, you know, if you have a 20 year policy, and you bought it in early 20s or 30s and now you’re you know, 40s 50s, like, what does that look like, you know, going forward? So I think like, I think, you know, and I think the other thing, too, is are there other wrinkles in your financial plan, i.e., hey, if I were to pass away, one of the questions I would ask myself is like, do I want to be able to send like, do I want to do I want Shay to have to worry about the mortgage or paying for the kids education? Right. So maybe that’s something that, like, I built into my, my plan going forward, and I didn’t have that, you know, 10 years ago. But now I do. So like, the other thing, too, is like, you know, again, mid-career, if you’re, if you maybe bought a house and moved out of the house, and now rented it, like, what, what happens from an insurance perspective? Like, do you want that property to be paid off? So I think like, I think, yeah, there’s there’s this renewal period, potentially, like, what do you need? And again, maybe it’s not, you know, maybe maybe you buy a 10 year term policy to kind of bridge it maybe don’t need another 20? Year? Maybe you do. But I think there’s also things that you can, in a proper calculation, say, Okay, this is important to me, this is not important to me, and then reflect that in insurance. So, obviously, I think the the life insurance is going to be really important. For some people, even getting it in place, which people just like the estate plan will drag their feet on that long term disability again, that’s one of the things I’m not really worried about short term disability, I think without it, I would just plus up the emergency fund, but from a long term disability, you know, again, how is your income changed over the over the course of the years, you know, if you’re, if you get it through a group policy, that’s going to typically be a function of what you earn. But, you know, if you have your own policy, should you  supplement that policy? Because your earnings have continued to climb? You know, does that make sense long term care, we typically, you know, the our thought here is that we want to, we want to support the client as much to age in place. So so much of the science or so much of the studies show that the longer that you can be in your own surroundings and age in your own home, whatever that looks like. So that typically means bringing in some help as you age, you know, that’s going to be important. So what can we do to buy a long term care policy to meet that minimum, and then again, different parts of the country, that’s going to be a different, different amount per month. But we typically want to look at this, believe it or not, in our late 40s, early 50s, because there’s a sweet spot of, you know, if you’re too early, it doesn’t make sense. If you’re too late, it doesn’t make sense in terms of the availability of the of the policies. So what does that look like? So, typically, late 40s, early 50s, is when we want to have that conversation. And again, a lot of people, they kind of just like security, they kind of blow this off, like this is not for me, but you know, I think more and more of of, you know, the the industry is trying to support clients as best they can, to, you know, age in their home residence, and you know, and do it versus going into a facility or something like that. So long term care is going to be really important. And then the last one, I would mention, Tim is property and casualty. So doing an assessment here, holistic plan, which is our tax tool, has this deliverable that we’re testing out now that looks at homeowner’s auto and an umbrella policy. And what it does is try to find gaps in coverage. And if you think about homeowners, if you haven’t dusted that off in a while, like what your home was, you know, if you bought a home at 35, and now you’re 40, over the last five years, your home has appreciated a lot. So are you underinsured in that regard? You know, do you have enough assets? Or is there is there a risk there that you should have an overarching umbrella insurance to cover risk if something were to happen, or if you were to get sued? So these are kind of, again, next level things to kind of consider and just doing a checkup from an insurance perspective, do you have the proper life, long term disability? Is Long Term Care something on the horizon? And then from a property and casualty perspective, are there risks there that we don’t know about that we should have kind of, you know, a circling back to make sure that the coverages that we that are currently in place are, you know, suitable for what you’re currently at in terms of, of risk?

Tim Ulbrich  43:53

Yeah, that’s a good call on on the property casualty just for the appreciation you know, is a good good reminder for me as you mentioned, I was thinking about we had a fire of a house in our neighborhood it’s probably been sitting now for over a year and a half note no movement on the home and all I can think of is it’s probably some type of insurance issue going on trying to work through the process but you know that that’s exactly the question that came to mind right of hey, you know, what, what is the replacement coverage that you have? What’s the timeline of that replacement and given the appreciation and the cost to rebuild a fresh look at those policies, you know, is certainly warranted.

Tim Baker  44:27

I mean, I just I just got a picture here from Shay- fire in the next neighborhood. Fire started in the garage with a lithium battery charger catching on fire. So this is like as as we’re recording here, this is the picture from Shay so like, this stuff is important. Again, if we haven’t dusted that off in a while you’re leaving yourself open, you know, to risk that we don’t and I think it’s a somewhat of an easy fix to mitigate that.

Tim Ulbrich  44:53

Well I hope all was good there. Thanks again for great, great stuff, Tim, as we look through these six mid-career for pharmacist moves. For more information and details on each of these as a reminder, go to yourfinancialpharmacist.com/midcareer. Again, midcareer is one word. And for those that are looking to work with one of our certified financial planners at YFP on your individual financial plan, which would certainly touch these six areas as well as many more, make sure to head on over to YFPplanning.com. Again, that’s yfpplanning.com. You can book a discovery call. We’d love to have the opportunity to talk with you to see whether or not our services are the right fit. Tim, thanks so much and we’ll catch up again here in the future. 

Tim Baker  45:32

Thanks, Tim. 

Tim Ulbrich  45:34

DISCLAIMER: As we conclude this week’s podcast and important reminder that the content on this show is provided to you for informational purposes only and is not intended to provide and should not be relied on for investment or any other advice. Information in the podcast and corresponding materials should not be construed as a solicitation or offer to buy or sell any investment or related financial products. We urge listeners to consult with a financial advisor with respect to any investment. Furthermore, the information contained in our archive newsletters, blog posts and podcasts is not updated and may not be accurate at the time you listen to it on the podcast. Opinions and analyses expressed herein are solely those of Your Financial Pharmacist unless otherwise noted, and constitute judgments as of the dates published. Such information may contain forward looking statements, which are not intended to be guarantees of future events. Actual results could differ materially from those anticipated in the forward looking statements. For more information, please visit yourfinancialpharmacist.com/disclaimer. Thank you again for your support of the Your Financial Pharmacist podcast. Have a great rest of your week.

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YFP 357: Emergency Fund Check-Up: Five Questions You Must Answer


Tim Ulbrich, PharmD (YFP Co-Founder & CEO) covers five questions that you should ask related to your emergency fund to determine whether or not it is adequately funded and optimized.

This episode is brought to you by First Horizon.

Episode Summary

This week we’re diving deep into a financial fundamental that often flies under the radar: the emergency fund, also known as the rainy day fund.

Saving for unexpected expenses isn’t easy. It requires discipline, patience, and a leap of faith to stash away money for something you can’t predict. Especially when other financial goals, like paying off debt or investing, are competing for your attention.

In this week’s episode, we explore why having an emergency fund is crucial. From unexpected medical bills to home repairs or sudden job loss, life throws curveballs when we least expect it. But having a well-stocked emergency fund isn’t just about having the dollars to cover these surprises; it’s about gaining peace of mind and confidence.

Join host, Tim Ulbrich, PharmD, as he covers 5 questions you should ask related to emergency fund to determine whether or not it is adequately funded and optimized.  Remember, when life throws you a curveball, your emergency fund will be there to catch you.

About Today’s Guest

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

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

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

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Episode Highlights

 

Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode

Episode Transcript

 

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$750*

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≥150K = $750* 

≥50K-150k = $300


Fixed: 4.89%+ APR (with autopay)

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$500*

Loans

≥50K = $500

Variable: 4.99%+ (with autopay)*

Fixed: 4.96%+ (with autopay)**

 Read rates and terms at SplashFinancial.com

Splash is a marketplace with loans available from an exclusive network of credit unions and banks as well as U-Fi, Laurenl Road, and PenFed

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YFP 356: Love and Money: How to Successfully Navigate your Finances with a Partner


Tim Ulbrich, PharmD (YFP Co-Founder & CEO) digs into how to successfully navigate finances with your partner and shares 25 questions you can use to frame conversations around money.

This episode is brought to you by First Horizon.

Episode Summary

On this episode, we’re talking about love and money! Discussing finances with your spouse, partner or significant other can be tricky sometimes. Tim Ulbrich shares 25 financial discussion questions to help you navigate these important conversations along with a free resource you can download to help get you started. From reflecting on your “money classroom” and the way you were raised to understand money to how you feel about debt, savings, and other important goals, Tim guides you through these important conversations. There is no one-size-fits all to managing finances in a relationship – but sharing the same vision and goals with your partner can set you up for success. This episode is brought to you by First Horizon.

About Today’s Guest

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

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

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

Key Points from the Episode

  • Navigating finances with a partner, identifying money personalities, and setting goals. [0:00]
  • Financial planning for pharmacists, merging money personalities in relationships. [1:49]
  • Money personalities and setting financial goals. [5:50]
  • Financial goals, budgeting, and spending plan for couples. [10:39]
  • Financial goals, debt management, housing, transportation, and children’s education. [14:57]
  • Financial planning with a partner, including goals, investing, and retirement planning. [20:04]
  • Financial planning and management strategies for couples. [24:32]

Episode Highlights

“I think it’s really important that we spend time to reflect on and identify our money personality and how this does or does not match with our partner. For some of you that have been at this topic for a while, you know how emotional and how behavioral this whole topic of managing money can be. And so it’s important we spend time to reflect on and to get curious about what our money approach is.” – Tim Ulbrich [4:13]

“It’s really helpful that we reflect upon what is the approach that we have surrounding money? How might that have been influenced by the money classroom that we grew up in? The more we can understand that about ourselves, as well as our partner, and how we bring those characteristics into the relationship can be really helpful as we set a plan going forward.” – Tim Ulbrich [8:03]

“Is everything merged when it comes to the finances? Might we have some things separate? Some things merged? Of course, that’s an individual decision for everyone. But ultimately, on some level, we want to have a shared vision, even if some of those items might be separate.” – Tim Ulbrich [8:38]

Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode

Episode Transcript

Tim Ulbrich  00:00

Hey everybody Tim Ulbrich and thank you for listening to the YFP Podcast where each week we strive to inspire and encourage you on your path towards achieving financial freedom. This week we’re talking love and money how to successfully navigate your finances with a significant other spouse or partner. Easier said than done right? During the show, I discuss how to identify with your money personality and how this does or does not match with your partner strategies for setting and achieving goals together 25 financial questions and discussions that every couple should have? Hang with me. I’ll give you a resource and a link to download those questions and advice from the YFP community on what has and has not worked for them in their own journey, navigating this important topic with their partner. 

Tim Ulbrich  00:45

Now before we jump into this week’s episode, I have a hard truth for you to hear. Making a six figure income is not a financial plan. Yes, you’ve worked hard to get where you are today. Yes, you’re earning a good income. But have you ever wondered, Am I on track to retire? How do I prioritize and fund all these competing financial goals that I have? How do I plan financially for big upcoming life events and changes such as moving, having a baby, changing jobs, getting married or retiring? And perhaps why am I not as far along financially at this point in my career as I thought I would be? Well, maybe the answer is that your six figure income is not a financial plan. As a pharmacist, you have an incredible tool in your toolbox: that’s your salary. But without a vision and a plan that it good income will only go so far. That’s why we started Your Financial Pharmacist where YFP we support pharmacists at every stage of their careers to take control their finances, reach their financial goals, and build wealth through comprehensive fee only financial planning and tax planning. Our team of certified financial planners works with pharmacists all across the United States and helps our clients set their future selves up for success while living a rich life today. If you’re ready to see how YFP can support you on your financial journey, you can learn more by visiting your financial pharmacist.com/learn again, that’s your financial pharmacist.com/learn. Alright, let’s hear from today’s sponsor First Horizon and then we’ll jump into the show. 

Tim Ulbrich  02:16

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

Tim Ulbrich  03:20

Hi there, Tim Ulbrich here flying solo this week as we talk about love and money: how to successfully navigate your finances with a partner. Now first things first, this is a heavy topic right? And I do not have all the answers. When it comes to our financial plan for Jess and I we have found the system- keyword system -that works best for us. But we are far from perfect. We’ve made our fair share of mistakes. We haven’t always been on the same page. And it certainly has required compromise and grace on both sides. So this is not a preach and teach episode. That would be very helpful. Rather, the intent is to give you some things to think about and conversation starters, to find the system that works best for you. Because at the end of the day, that’s going to be what matters most.

Now, before we jump into some of the tactical strategies, and some of the questions and conversation starters, I think it’s really important that we spend time to reflect on and identify our money personality and how this does or perhaps does not match with our partner. Right for some of you that have been at this topic for a while, you know how emotional and how behavioral this whole topic of managing money can be. And so it’s important we spend time to reflect on and to get curious about what is our money approach? What is our money, personality? What is our money classroom that we grew up in the household that we grow up in financially? And how does that perhaps shape how we manage our money today and ultimately how we merge two of those money personalities together as we try to work and get on the same page. So some questions to think about here as it relates to the money personality. Do you approach money in the same manner that you were raised? Have you reflected upon the money classroom that you grew up in? And maybe what worked and didn’t work? Was money in your household an open conversation? Was it a closed conversation? Was it stressful? Was it calm? What was the emotional tone surrounding money? Was there transparency around money? Or was it a taboo topic? What were the spending habits, what was said? And what were some of the unsaid lessons that you learned along the way? And how did all of this potentially contribute to the money personality and the habits that you employ today that you ultimately bring into your relationship? Right, good and bad. Probably true for all of us.

If you want some guidance on this, there’s a great resource, we’ll link to it in the show notes. The Money Couple has five different money personalities, they have a book and an assessment if you want to really dig in and go further on this topic. And they in that resource they referenced five money personalities, those five personalities are number one, the Security Seeker. Number two, is the Saver; number three is the Spender; number four is the Risk Taker; and number five is the Flyer. Now, anytime we do these assessments, right, we’re running a risk a little bit in terms of bucketing ourselves into one of these approaches, when often we may have a little bit of more than one of these. And that’s one of the things I like about this tool is they combine two of these, what they call a primary and a secondary to come up with your money profile. So for example, let’s say that you identify as a saver/security seeker. Okay, so just some quick definitions here a saver, pretty much their outlook is that as they share in their own resources, A penny saved is a penny earned. You make things happen by getting the best deal, right, you can often be someone that’s very thrifty. Characteristics of a saver would be someone who’s trustworthy organized with money, they also would have some real challenges potentially, including maybe obsessing over money, having a hard time letting go. And they would rarely spend compulsively, they really liked the plan. And they really liked that good deal. Now a Security Seeker, which here was the secondary personality, they have an outlook that better safe than sorry, right protection and security is the definition here. So these individuals make things happen by planning for the future. And they’re often very well prepared. So some defining characteristics here would be they can investigate things thoroughly do a lot of research challenges, of course, could be, you know, some of the potential and again, letting, letting go. And maybe finding that balance that we often talk about in the show of living the rich life along the way. Certainly also trustworthy with their finances, they want to make decisions by confirming that there’s a plan, right? So they’re not, they’re not gonna be very spontaneous, and they’re spending money like to have multiple options. This is just one example, one assessment. But it’s really helpful, again, that we get curious that we reflect upon what is the approach that we have surrounding money, how might that have been influenced by the money classroom that we grew up in, and the more we can understand that about ourselves, as well as our partner, and how we bring those characteristics into the relationship can be really helpful, as we then set a plan going forward.

Tim Ulbrich  08:27

So once we really think about some of those money, personalities, you know, I think it’s then that we want to really figure out how can we set and achieve goals together? Now we’re gonna get into a little bit about, you know, perhaps is it everything is merged when it comes to the finances? Might we have something separate? Some things merged, completely separate. Of course, that’s an individual decision for everyone. But ultimately, on some level, we want to have a shared vision, even if some of those items might be separate. And I think it’s so important, I’ve talked about this on the show before, that we start with the vision, and not necessarily start with the budget or the spending plan, right? Not start in the weeds, but really start on what is the dream that we have financially? What does success look like for us collectively as a unit? And can we agree upon that vision, that direction, that dream that we have for us financially, right? That’s a much, I say, easy but easier conversation than getting into the individual decisions. This is also the place where we really want to get all of those goals, all of those ideas out of our heads onto paper, we want to see what overlaps what doesn’t overlap. Obviously, there’s gonna be some compromise here along the way, but once we get them to be shifting from unsaid to said, right, so Jess can share her goals, I can share my goals, we can see what what is similar, what’s different, and then we can begin to start to compromise and prioritize those. That’s really where we can start to then begin to implement and execute on that vision. So for us, I’ve shared this before on the show, typically what we do is want once a year we’re looking at, hey, what does success look like for us over the next 12 months? Right? Keeping the bigger vision in mind? What does success look like for the next 12 months? And what are those things that we want to focus on spending? You know, so we’re looking at, hey, are we on track with savings goals for the future? And retirement planning? If not, what are some things that we want to surplus in the following year? What do some of the experiences look like for us in terms of vacations, home projects, things like that? What are the giving goals for the year right? These are the things that we need to begin to, again, get out of our heads onto paper so we can start to set a plan. Now, I think it’s really helpful here, especially if you have two individuals that are on completely different pages that this is really really where a third party can be very helpful. I know for Jess and I, our financial planner at YFP has been really helpful in getting us to have conversations not only together when we’re in the room with a financial planner, but also in between those meetings to make sure that this is an open conversation as we can possibly have. Now, I have some questions here that I think are good conversation starters. Right? I started the episode by saying this is not about telling you what you should do. This is really about helping to start conversations, stimulate some discussion so that you can figure out what the system is that works best for you. So I’ve organized these questions into different areas. And I have 25 of them, I’m just going to mention them briefly. And we have a one page resource that you can download for free that will have a list of these questions. You can go to yourfinancialpharmacist.com/25 – two five again, yourfinancialpharmacist.com/25.

Tim Ulbrich  11:43

 Okay, so in the spirit of starting conversations, here are 25 financial discussions that I think are worth having. And let’s start with the first bucket, which is setting goals, budgeting and just the overall approach to managing the finances. So the first question is, have we discussed and agreed upon our short term, midterm and long term financial goals? Now you can define these differently, I think of short term goals is within the next 12 months, next year, mid-term, one to three years in long-term greater than three years. Obviously, you can determine the timeline that makes the most sense of you. And then furthermore, how can we best set, review and update these on a regular basis? So there’s that initial exercise, and then how often are we going to be reviewing these so that we can make sure we are able to implement those in the plan? Sounds simple, right. But everything starts with the vision and getting to some level of an agreement on the shared goals.

Second question here is have we developed and agreed upon monthly spending plan, budget, whatever you want to call it, that accounts for all of the income and all the expenses? And does this spending plan, budget, again, whatever you want to call it, does it represent and include the goals that we just worked through in the first question? Now, again, for some individuals, and I’ll share some data here in a little bit from our community, for some individuals, everything is merged. Some they have some separate, some is completely separate. So obviously, you have to work through this as it relates to how you treat the merging or lack thereof of the accounts. But do we have representation within our spending plan, approach, whatever that looks like lots of different ways to do that. So that the goals, there’s an actual plan to implement and achieve those goals.

Question number three, does one of us take more of the lead than the other when it comes to managing the finances? And if so, are both of us aware of our overall situation? How do we ultimately make sure that both parties are aware of the progress if one person is taking the lead. I have seen that that often, not always, often is the case where one person may take the lead. So if that’s the case, what’s the plan? What’s the strategy? What’s the structure so that both parties are aware of what’s going on? And the overall progress? Right, the overall situation?

Number four, I’ve alluded to this a couple times is the desire to merge all of our finances; to keep some separate, some merged; or to have everything completely separate. Now for Jess and I, we’ve made the decision that everything’s merged, I’m not here to tell you that you should do that, or that’s the only way. But really having that conversation of what’s best for us, is it all merge is a little bit of both, or is it everything that would be completely separate. Number five, do we need to check with one another before spending any money? If so, is it a certain amount? What’s the criteria for this? How do we determine this. Some, you know, couples might have a large purchase or something that would trigger hey, we need to have a discussion about this. So what are those criteria, if any exist when it comes to making some of those bigger purchases? So that’s the first group of questions around setting goals. budgeting and your overall approach. 

Tim Ulbrich  15:01

The second group of questions is around debt management. Debt Management. So question number six here on our list of 25. is how much debt have we acquired thus far? Right? Do we know? Do we know the numbers? Is everyone aware of the debt that’s that’s accrued? And what will be our plan to pay off the debt? Do we both understand each other’s debt position and the feelings perhaps just as important, the feelings towards the debt? Right, for some people, I’ve talked about this on the show before for some people, there can be a significant aversion to debt? Others maybe that’s not the case. So if you have two individuals where you have opposite feelings on debt, that’s an important conversation to have. Are we treating this as our debt? Or is this separate debt? Right? When you think about things like credit card debt, student loans, car payments, or other things that especially may have been existing coming into the relationship. Number seven, again, on debt management, how comfortable are we with having debt? And I would encourage you to break this down further to different types of debt, right, including student loans, credit card, mortgages, car loans, etc. So not just a blanket debt good or bad, but how do we feel about different types of debt? And then final question on debt? Number eight on our list is do we view each other’s debt as our debt? Or is this your debt? Right? And how does that potentially approach how we pay that off? All right, third group of questions is around housing and transportation. So question nine on our list is how do we feel about renting property versus owning a home hot topic right now, given where the housing market is at, given where home prices are and where interest rates are at? And if we already own a home, are we okay with the current situation? Or is there potentially a desire to move? Right? Again, we want to get a lot of these questions and maybe things that we’re thinking about making sure we have an opportunity to discuss with one another. So if we don’t own a home already, how do we feel about renting versus owning a home? What’s that timeline? Like if we already own a home? Are we thinking we’re set? Or is there a potential or desire to move? Next question around housing transportation, number 10 on our list, if currently renting, and there’s a goal to own a home, do we agree on the location, on the purchase price, and the amount of downpayment that would be needed, right? That’s gonna have a big impact on the budget. And again, if things are separate, and not merge, how are we both contributing to that downpayment? And getting ready for that purchase? Number 11, as relates to transportation? Do we view our cars as a necessity? Is it a luxury where we lease? Are we gonna buy our cars? If we buy our cars? Are we paying them outright? Are we going to finance part of it? How do we view the transportation part of the plan? And again, let me pause here and reinforce what I was saying towards the beginning. I don’t really think there’s a right or wrong answer here. The goal is to really get you thinking about, hey, how do we feel individually? How do we feel collectively as a unit? You know, as I think about this question here on transportation, it reminds me of Ramit Sethi’s book, I Will Teach You To Be Rich. I’ve referenced that many times on the show before and one of the things he talks about he starts the book is this concept called Money Dials. And what he’s referring to there is identifying those things that derive the most significance and meaning for you as a part of the financial plan and have a plan to spend money, what he’s referring to is the dial, dial that up. And alternately for the things that you maybe don’t care as much about financially, dial that down, right. For some people, you know, transportation cars may be something that’s has significant value, and for other people, not so much. 

Tim Ulbrich  18:35

Alright, next group of questions relates to kids, children. So number 12 on our list is how do we feel about one of the biggest expenses we often see in the financial plan – daycare? What’s our budget for this? And how does it fit in with other financial goals? Number 13, how do we feel about public versus private K through 12? education? You know, again, this might certainly link back to the home purchase and the location and and where you’re looking for home based on schools. And if it is private education is the goal, how will we plan for this and prioritize it with other financial goals? Number 14, again, in this area of children, how do we feel about paying for our kids college? This is a hot topic, right? You often see maybe people that are split on this. And how do we plan for this? Are we hoping to pay for it in its entirety? A partial amount? Are we banking on you know, scholarships or other funding other family to help taking on debt? What’s the plan for that? And then last question, as it relates to children, what ideas and strategies do we want to employ to teach our kids about managing money? Right? We started this episode talking about the money classroom we grew up in. And for those that have children in the home that you’re raising now, they’re obviously growing up in their own money classroom in your house. And so what strategies are we employing and how are we approaching teaching kids about money? What’s our philosophy about behind that, right.  So this this gets to things like, you know, our philosophy around alarm allowances, and giving, and how we’re going to teach some of those lessons to our kids. And at what ages are they ready for those lessons?

All right, next group relates to saving, investing, and retirement planning. So question number 16, when it comes to the emergency fund, are we comfortable with three months? Right, your general rule of thumb recommendation three to six months of essential expenses? Are we comfortable with that? Three months, six months, something in between, something different? Have we discussed that? Again, are we on the same page with that?

Number 17, what financial goals are we trying to achieve by saving or investing? What does success look like, right? So we often talk about the importance of saving and investing for the future. But for what? What are we trying to achieve? And what does success look like? Number 18? What does retirement look like for both of us? Are there similarities? Are there differences? What’s the desired age? Right? What are the activities? What what are we working on? Which is the next question: what activities are we engaged in during retirement? What are we doing together? What are we doing separately? Right, beginning to envision so that we’re approaching that retirement phase with intentionality.

Next question, how much should we be saving and investing for retirement each month? And how do we balance and prioritizes with other goals? And then final question here on saving investing in retirement planning? What is our risk tolerance for investing? And again, if we have two different risk profiles? How are we approaching that as we’re saving, investing and planning for the future?

Final set of questions as a group, I’m just calling miscellaneous questions. Got four left on the list here. Number 22. How does each of us feel about giving? How much? How often?Where? How will we plan for this? And what priority? Are there certain things that we have to have achieved before we do this or not? Number 23: Do we plan to do the financial plan ourselves? Or are we looking to hire a professional to assist? Are we on the same page about this? If the goal is to hire someone, what are the criteria we’re going to use that will help us find the right fit? Who’s taking the lead in this conversation? What does that look like for us as a unit? When it comes to assisting family financially, whether that be caring for elderly parents, maybe that’s supporting a family member need or some other situation, how do we feel about this? Right? How do we feel about this financially, and the impact that it can have in other parts of our financial plan? And then finally, question number 25? How will we strike that balance between saving for the future and living a rich life today? What does it mean to us to be living that rich life today? And how are we prioritizing that in the financial plan?

So again, that’s 25 conversation starters, there’s a lot there, right, the different categories we talked about, you can download that list again, yourfinancialpharmacist.com/25. I hope you’ll reference that maybe print it off, and have some of those discussions with your partner. Next, I want to give some input not just from me, but from the YFP community on what has and has not worked for them in their own journey of navigate navigating this topic with their partner.

So I recently posted a poll on LinkedIn asking the following question, that for those that are working with a significant other spouse or partner on their finances, which of the following best describes your situation: is everything merged or all the finances merged? Are some things merged something separate? Or is nothing merged? In essence, everything is separate. And what we saw from that data was just shy of 50%- 49% responded that all of the finances were merged. 42% responded that some were merged and some are separate. And 10% responded that nothing was merged, and that everything was separate in their accounts. Now, some of the comments and advice that I thought were helpful to pass on and again, some some different perspectives here. Kelly had this to say lots of systems can work. But it all starts with transparency. It’s not uncommon for one person in the household to do the bill pay, and thus see more of the transactions. Periodic money dates can help facilitate conversation. A favorite topic in our house is identifying mutual goals and where we want to prioritize funding for the year, sometimes their goals are not aligned. And that is important conversation, as well. So Kelly, comes transparency. Having that open conversation having those periodic money does it dates and sometimes those goals aren’t aligned, and important conversation to get on the same page. Tracy said that we have a joint household account, where we contribute an equal amount each month to cover our household expenses, and some minor rainy day savings. We tossed around percentage based on income but landed on equal flat dollar amount. We also have separate personal spending accounts for ourselves, so we don’t feel like we have to justify personal spending to one another. We’ve divvied up who contributes and covers what to each savings bucket and who does the insurance via their paycheck all this to say after typing this that our marriage is basically a business. I thought that was some humor to add in there as well. Cassidy said my husband, I follow the 50-30-20 budgeting process right now. We have a joint account where 50% of our income goes towards household expenses and joint purchases, a joint high yield savings where we both contribute 20% of our paycheck for larger goals. And then 30% goes in our fun money personal checking accounts. So far it’s working great ensures that we’re both contributing an equitable portion of our income.

Final one that came in is someone shared just got married in summer of 2023. My husband wanted to keep our finances separate, except for one joint checking to pay utilities out of. This came from seeing his parents get divorced about six years ago and had always fought about money. He did not want that to be us. So going into the marriage, we plan to keep our own savings. I that’s a great example before I go further with this one of how that upbringing, right, how that money classroom can impact how we approach our money today. She goes on to say that we’re now nine months married, and we’re getting ready to buy a house with the need to pay the mortgage, we’re rethinking finances and will likely be combining more of our money. He prefers a separate checking account for each item, such as utilities and mortgage, we still plan to keep the money we had pre-marriage as our own stock savings, mutual funds, etc. We have a joint credit card for joint expenses and groceries that’s worked well. We still have separate credit cards. Being upfront about money has been so important to us. We’ve had several long conversations about money, pre-marriage, and within the last few months to get us set up for success. So it sounds like here, there’s even some transition, as they’re getting ready to purchase a home. They’ve been married now just shy of a year, maybe perhaps more that’s moving into the joint accounts, but a system that they’re still working through.

So I appreciate all of those that contributed providing different ideas. So again, the spirit of this right is to identify that system that works best for you. Right works best for you and your partner, really accounting where we started with reflecting on and getting curious about what is the money mindset? What’s the money personality approach that I have? And do I have a good understanding of that for me, as well as my partner? Really coming up then with those shared goals? That vision we talked about? What does success look like in the short, mid and long term, and then beginning to work through those individual areas of the financial plan.

Tim Ulbrich  27:19

Well, certainly last but not least, as many of you know, we have a team of Certified Financial Planners at Your Financial Pharmacist that we offer fee-only financial planning and tax planning, we work with pharmacists all across the country. And certainly we’d love to have the opportunity to work with you. And we’d love to have an opportunity to talk more to see whether or not the services are a good fit. You can learn more about our fee-only financial planning services again at yourfinancialpharmacist.com/learn. Again, that’s your financial pharmacist.com/learn. I think, as I mentioned a couple times that third party, right, that third party can be so helpful to facilitate some of these conversations and to begin to execute on the different aspects of the financial plan. Well, thanks so much for listening, and have a great rest of your week. 

Tim Ulbrich  28:05

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

Tim Ulbrich  28:51

As we conclude this week’s podcast and important reminder that the content on this show is provided you for informational purposes only and is not intended to provide and should not be relied on for investment or any other advice. Information to the podcast and corresponding material should not be construed as a solicitation or offer to buy or sell any investment or related financial products. We urge listeners to consult with a financial advisor with respect to any investment. Furthermore, the information contained in our archive newsletters, blog posts and podcasts is not updated and may not be accurate at the time you listen to it on the podcast. Opinions and analyses expressed herein are solely those of Your Financial Pharmacist unless otherwise noted and constitute judgments as of the dates published. Such information may contain forward looking statements, which are not intended to be guarantees of future events. Actual results could differ materially from those anticipated in the forward looking statements. For more information, please visit yourfinancialpharmacist.com/disclaimer. Thank you again for your support of the Your Financial Pharmacist Podcast. Have a great rest of your week.

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