YFP 212: Checklist for Building a Strong Financial Foundation

Checklist for Building a Strong Financial Foundation

On this episode, sponsored by CommonBond, Tim Ulbrich shares his checklist for building a strong financial foundation.

Summary

Tim Ulbrich shares insight from one of his most popular talks for pharmacy students and recent pharmacy graduates, Preparing to Be Financially Fit. In this episode, he walks the listener through his checklist of five items and actions necessary for a solid financial foundation.

1. Develop and automate a monthly system: Not only is it a good idea to create a vision for success with tangible goals and a budget for each month, but it is also equally important to automate when possible to get out of your way when it comes to saving, investing, and planning.
2. Knock out the baby steps: Work to eliminate high-interest credit card debt and build your emergency fund.
3. Have a student loan repayment plan: Inventory your student loans and determine your starting point. Work on a strategy to pay loans down. Your repayment options may include tuition reimbursement or repayment, loan forgiveness, or refinancing.
4. Prepare for the catastrophic: This checklist item is referring to various types of insurance. Pharmacists should plan for potentially catastrophic events by ensuring that you are aptly insured both professionally and personally.
5. Develop a plan for long-term investing: Lastly, a long-term investing plan is key to your financial independence and freedom however that may look for YOU.

Mentioned on the Show

• CommonBond 0% APR – Check Your Rate
• YFP Planning: Financial Planning for Pharmacists
• YFP 124: The Behavioral Investor with Dr. Daniel Crosby
• I Will Teach You To Be Rich by Ramit Sethi
• YFP Budget Template
• YFP 057: The Power of Automating Your Financial Plan
• YFP 026: Baby Stepping Your Financial Plan – The 2 Things to Focus On First
• Bureau of Labor Statistics: Income for Pharmacists
• YFP 018: Maximizing the Benefits of Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF)
• YFP 062: The ‘Other’ Forgiveness
• YFP 176: How Stephanie Got $72,000 Forgiven Through TEPSLF
• Your Financial Pharmacist Student Loan Refinancing
• The Ultimate Guide to Pay Back Pharmacy School Loans
• YFP 155: Why You Need Liability Insurance
• Insurance for Pharmacists
• YFP 074: Evaluating Your 401k Plan
• YFP 163: Investing Beyond the 401k/403b
• YFP 096: How to do a Backdoor Roth IRA
• YFP 019: How Do Health Savings Accounts (HSA) Fit Into a Financial Plan?
• YFP 165: The Power of a Health Savings Account
• YFP 073: How to Determine the Priority of Investing
• YFP 208: Why Minimizing Fees On Your Investments Is So Important
• Schedule your FREE Discovery Call with YFP Planning

Episode Transcript

Tim Ulbrich: Hey, everyone. Tim Ulbrich here, and I’m flying solo this week as we talk about a checklist for building a strong financial foundation. Now, we’re a little bit over the halfway point through the year, and perhaps if you were like me for this year, you set some big, audacious goals, hopefully some of those financial goals, at the beginning of this year in December or January. And here we are, and maybe those goals have fallen by the wayside or we’ve forgotten about them. And this is a great time of year to bring those goals back, dust them off, and see where we’re at and adjust and see what we need to make for the second half of the year. And that’s what we’re going to talk about today when we talk about a checklist for building a strong financial foundation. My hope is that whether you’re listening and you’re someone who’s got $300,000 in student loan and feel like you’re spinning your wheels with trying to figure that out among other goals or whether you’re listening and you’re someone who’s got a net worth of $1 million or more, my hope is that everyone can take at least one or two things away from this episode.

You know, it dawned on me that one of the most common talks that I give to a group of pharmacists or pharmacy students or residents is preparing to be financially fit. And in that talk, I talk about five things that I believe make up a strong financial foundation. And the way I describe that financial foundation is if we think about our financial plan as if we’re building a home, right, before we can talk about or even think about the upgrades or the remodel of the kitchen or finishing the basement or adding on that patio or deck or even upgrading our landscaping or lighting, we’ve better make sure we’ve got good foundation in place from which we can then grow and make some of those decisions. And the same is true with our financial plan. And so sometimes, we’ve got to go back to the basics no matter where we are at our financial journey and make sure that we’ve got a good, solid foundation in place, one that doesn’t have any cracks or if we identify cracks, we fill some of those cracks in so that we can build and walk confidently in our financial plan, knowing that we’ve done the hard work to put that foundation in place. And one of my key takeaways and hopes for this episode is that we can all recognize that building wealth, achieving financial independence, living a rich life, whatever we want to call it, is really dependent upon having a good, solid foundation in place. So I’m going to walk through five areas that I believe make up this foundation, a checklist for building that foundation and within each one of these, I’m going to provide some additional resources and more information that you can dig deeper on any one of these topics.

Alright, so let’s jump in. No. 1 is Developing and Automating a Monthly System. Developing and automating a monthly system. Now what I’m talking about here — and you probably figured this out — what I’m talking about here is a budget, right, is a system, is a playbook that we can follow each and every month. And then we automate that system and really get ourselves out of the way so we can ensure we achieve our goals. I often don’t lead with the term “budgeting” because it’s not flashy, it’s not exciting, but it’s so foundational to the financial plan, no matter what budgeting method or process that you use.

So in this first step of developing an automated monthly system, you know, a few things that we need to think about. No. 1 is we’ve got to have a vision. We have to know where we want to go before we can take some steps forward. So before we get into the weeds of what budget system or template or method or tool or app, we’ve got to know where we’re going, right? We’ve got to take a look up and see what’s the vision? What’s the path? What’s the guiding light for our financial plan and the decisions that we’re going to make and ultimately the goals that we want to achieve? And we do this by asking ourselves some big, yet important questions, questions like what does financial success look like for you? For you individually, what does financial success look like? How would you define that? You know, why do you care about this topic of money to begin with, right? Money is simply a tool. So why don’t we care about this topic of money. Or perhaps another question may be one that I ask to many folks. You know, if you were to fast forward 25 years and look backwards, what would need to happen that you would think to yourself, you know what, well done, really good job with that whole topic of personal finances? You know, we believe at YFP Planning that really good financial plan takes care of your future self but allows you to live a rich life today, right? We’ve got to have this balance of the future, we’ve got to be looking ahead. But we also need to be prioritizing the things that are most important to us today. So when we’re talking about developing an automated monthly system, we’ve got to first start with the vision.

You know, next from that vision, we’ve got to set some tangible goals, right? So we’ve got to come away from the clouds, come down from the clouds and that dream and vision we have, and let’s set some tangible goals. You know, what are three or four things that we want to achieve over the next 6 or 12 months such that if we achieve those, we’re on the path towards achieving our long-term vision. So we’ve got to set some tangible goals and the more specific, the better.

Then we’ve got to track our spending, right? We’ve got to look backwards and say, ‘OK, I’ve got this vision. I’ve got these goals. Am I actually spending in a way that’s going to allow me to achieve these goals?’ I always encourage folks to do a 90-day lookback at their spending. This can be humbling. This can be eye-opening at times. Often, we may underestimate our true expenses in any given category. And perhaps for some of you, that’s not the case. But this is a good snapshot, 90 days. We’re not necessarily just looking at one month, which may be an outlier for any reason, but getting a good average over a 90-day period of how we’re spending in any individual category of the budget.

Then once we’ve set the vision, once we have some tangible goals, once we’ve looked back at our spending, now let’s jump into the budget, right? And a good budget I believe is one that we’re really proactively thinking about how we’re going to direct our dollars and how they’re going to be spent and allocated toward the goals we want to achieve. It’s that proactive intention in addition to then tracking the expenses throughout the month. And then finally, we want to implement a system that can automate the process. You know, one of my favorite interviews on the YFP podcast was when I interviewed Dr. Daniel Crosby, who’s the author of “The Behavioral Investor.” And he studies how we think and behave around this whole topic of personal finance. And one of the things he said, which really resonates with me and his research supports, is that we often individually, ourselves and the decisions we make are often some of the biggest barriers that we put in front of our financial plan and achieving the goals that we want to achieve. And so automation, Ramit Sethi does a great job of talking about this in his book, “I Will Teach You to Be Rich.” Ramit Sethi talks about how automation can be one of the most powerful and profitable systems that you can build when it comes to your financial plan, right? So once we’ve done the hard work of setting the vision and we have some tangible goals and we know and can track our spending and we’re then able to set the budget, let’s put on automation, let’s fund our goals first, and let’s feel confident in knowing that we’ve developed a system that’s going to help accelerate our financial plan.

So that’s Step No. 1 here is Developing and Automating a Monthly System as we work towards this checklist for a strong financial foundation. Some resources here I would point you to is we’ve got an Excel budget template at YFP that we’ve developed. Certainly not the only way to do budgeting. At the end of the day, a good budget is one that works for you. But if you’re looking for a place to get started or perhaps to take a new, fresh look at the budgeting system you have, you can go to YourFinancialPharmacist.com/budget and download that Excel template. Another resource here I would point you to is Episode 057 of the podcast. We talked about the power of automation in your financial plan. And so that may be another one to visit if you want to learn more about that concept of automation and how to implement that in your own system. So that’s Step No. 1, Developing and Automating Your Monthly System.

Step No. 2 is Knocking Out the Baby Steps. Now, if we think about the foundation as five physical bricks that’s making up a foundation, these five things that we’re talking about, I tend to think of this one, No. 2, Knocking Out the Baby Steps, as if it’s really the foundation of the foundation, if you will. Brick No. 1, right? And so we’re talking about the things here that for some of you that are listening, if you’re thinking, Tim, I just feel overwhelmed with multiple goals that I’m trying to achieve, I don’t know where to start. Perhaps I’ve got six figures of student loan debt. You know, I’ve got decisions that I need to make around some credit card debt. And I want to build an emergency fund or grow my emergency fund. I’m trying to purchase a home or I’ve got expenses for the family. I really want to accelerate my investing plan, and I just don’t know where to start and how to prioritize this. Knocking out the baby steps, this Step No. 2, is really meant to be the first step from which you then build even further. And the two things I’m talking about here are high interest rate credit card debt and emergency fund. So these are the two baby steps that we need to think about as we walk into our financial plan. Now I think these are fairly obvious, two things we’ve talked about on the show before, high interest rate credit card debt, we’re talking about here not any credit card expenses or bills that you pay off each and every month but rather that revolving credit card debt that’s accruing double digit interest, cards that are accruing 15-25% interest. And for obvious reasons related to that interest rate and the impact that that can have on the rest of your financial plan, we’ve got to knock that credit card debt out, that high interest rate consumer debt out as soon as possible. So think of this as really the piece where we need to stop the bleeding, right? We need to stop the bleeding before we can then begin to take some of these other steps forward.

The second part here of the baby steps is the emergency fund. We’ve talked about this before on the show, Episode 026, we actually talked about both of these things of baby stepping into your financial plan. And emergency fund, you know, some general rules of thumb that I think about are 3-6 months worth of expenses, 3-6 months worth of expenses. There’s some determination and of course decision-making in there. Is it 3 months? Is it 6 months? Is it somewhere in between? And that depends on several factors. We’re looking here, in my opinion, at an emergency fund as a place where we’re not necessarily very excited about the growth or the interest or the accrual of that account. This is the place where we want this account to be liquid and accessible, where we can get to this money when an emergency happens without disrupting the rest of our financial plan. So we’re going to be doing our investing elsewhere in the financial plan, right? So we want this to be liquid, we want it to be accessible, perhaps it’s going to earn a little bit of interest, nothing too exciting in the moment based on what rates are at on things like long-term savings accounts and money market accounts and so forth. But the purpose here is really more about the liquidity and the accessibility of this fund. So that’s Step No. 2 here, Knocking Out the Baby Steps, high interest rate credit card debt and the emergency fund.

No. 3, Having a Student Loan Repayment Plan. Now, notice I did not say being debt-free. Right? For some of you, perhaps that is the case. Maybe there’s an aggressive debt repayment. But for others of you, it may be loan forgiveness. And that might be 10-year Public Service Loan Forgiveness. That might be a longer time period of non-Public Service Loan Forgiveness or 20-25 years. This might be a federal plan that’s going to take a little bit longer or, again, could be an aggressive payoff. So it’s about having a plan. You know, so many folks that I talk to — and I felt this very much in my own journey, sometimes it’s about the intentionality of knowing that you’ve evaluated the options that are available to you — here, we’re talking about student loans — that you’ve weighed those options, you’ve considered those in the context of the rest of your financial plan and your goals, and you’ve made a decision and determined a path forward and have a plan for how and when this debt is going to get paid off, whether that debt getting paid off is 10 years from now, whether it’s two years from now, or whether it’s even longer or shorter than either of those. So this group listening knows very well, whether it’s those that are in the weeds of those or just been aware of the conversation around student loan debt and pharmacy education, but we’re facing a significant challenge right now. Today’s graduate is the median indebtedness of a pharmacy graduate right now is $175,000. Ten years ago, that was $100,000. We’ve seen a $75,000 increase in the median indebtedness of a pharmacy graduate over a 10-year period. That is what it is. Right? And if you actually look at that stacked up against what a pharmacist is making as reported by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, you know, pharmacists’ income generally speaking have been relatively flat, right? We’ve seen some rise that you could argue accounts for some cost-of-living adjustments. But really, outside of that, we’re not seeing a significant bump up that would account for anywhere near what we’re seeing in terms of the rise of student loan debt.

And so we’ve got some work to do to put this plan together. And Step No. 1 is we’ve got to inventory our loans. We have to know exactly where we are at today. And I suspect many of you have already done this. This is knowing a list of my federal loans, a list of my private loans if applicable, who’s the loan servicing company, what’s the type of loan, what’s the interest rate on that loan? We’ve got to know everything about these loans so we can then determine what might make the most sense from a repayment option and strategy. And the reason why the inventory is so important is that often the loan type is going to direct, especially as we talk about federal options, is going to direct which repayment options may be available to you. And so sometimes — great example would be Public Service Loan Forgiveness — sometimes there’s some work that we have to do to consolidate those loans to then open up repayment options that allow us to pursue certain paths such as Public Service Loan Forgiveness.

So there are three main buckets — when we talk about student loan repayment, there are three main buckets that we want to be thinking about. And I encourage you to think about them in this order. No. 1 is tuition reimbursement repayment. No. 2 is forgiveness. And No. 3 is just paying them off. And that could be paying them off either staying in the federal system or paying them off by moving those loans with a private company through the process known as refinancing. So when we think about these three options, if I had to go from those that would have the least number of listeners probably pursuing it, it would be probably tuition reimbursement payment, a little bit more would be forgiveness, and probably more would be that third bucket where you’re going to pay them off either through a refinance or through staying in the federal system. That first bucket, tuition reimbursement repayment, is referring to those pharmacists who enter employment situations where typically in exchange for some type of service — so think like military pharmacist types of positions, Indian Health Service and so forth, some VA locations through the Education Debt Reduction program — typically in exchange for some type of service, you’re going to have a portion or maybe in some cases all of your student loan balance that might be forgiven. And more often, we think here of federal programs. There are some situations where there are state-based programs. So for example, here in Ohio, there was a program for a period of time for pharmacists that were working in qualified healthcare clinics that were serving patients that were adversely impacted by the opioid epidemic, so think of pharmacists that might work in like federally qualified health centers, could be charitable pharmacy organizations and so forth. More often than not, though, we’re thinking here about federal programs. But it is worth looking into anything that might apply on the state level. So that’s the first bucket. The second bucket is forgiveness. Now within forgiveness on the federal level, there’s two options: one that is better known, Public Service Loan Forgiveness. We’ve talked about extensively on this show. It’s gotten a lot of national attention, some good, some bad, more bad. But I think that probably hasn’t been necessarily fair to that plan. And then the second option, which is not as well-known, is what we call non-Public Service Loan Forgiveness. And there’s some key differences, three things that I really think about differentiating PSLF and non-PSLF. No. 1 would be who you work for. So with Public Service Loan Forgiveness, you have to work for a qualified employer. Typically this is going to be a 501(c)3 not-for-profit organization for most pharmacists. Some also would be a federal agency or organization. So think of pharmacists that are working in a hospital or health system setting, perhaps an academic environment and so forth. So that’s the first main difference between the two is who you work for. So PSLF, you have to work for a qualifying employer. Non-PSLF, it doesn’t matter who you work for. Second thing would be the time period. So with PSLF, it’s 120 payments, does not have to be consecutive, but 120 qualifying payments until you can apply for and receive tax-free forgiveness. So minimum of a 10-year period. With non-PSLF, you’re looking at a 20-25 year timeline. Third main difference is related to the taxes and the forgiveness. So with PSLF, if we cross our t’s and dot our i’s, that’s tax-free forgiveness. And with non-PSLF, it is taxable forgiveness. So let’s say 20 years from now, you go to — you’re at the point of forgiveness for the non-PSLF option with an income-driven repayment plan. Let’s say you make $100,000 in that year and you’ve got $100,000 that’s to be forgiven. And that year, your income would be taxed — or you’d have a taxable amount that would be $200,000, not $100,000 because that $100,000 that’s to be forgiven would be treated as taxable income. So this is referred to in the student loan groups as the tax bomb, right? So something we’ve got to be thinking about, we’ve got to plan for if we’re going to be pursuing this option. To many pharmacists that don’t qualify for PSLF and especially those that have a higher debt load, this is something that may be a viable option. And then the third bucket, as I mentioned, is we’re just going to pay them off. So we’re not going to have someone else reimburse/repay, we’re not going to have forgiveness, we’re just going to pay them off, either in the federal system or moving with a private lender through refinance. Now lots of logistics to think about here if you do refinance, different terms, different rate considerations, companies have differences between them. We’ve got lots of resources available on this at YourFinancialPharmacist.com on refinancing, fixed v. variable rates and so forth. And then not all the benefits and considerations are the same in the federal system as they are in the private. So things like income-driven repayment plan, forbearances, forgiveness upon death or disability, these are things that you want to be thinking about if you’re going to move your loans from the federal into the private system.

So I’m just scratching the surface here as we work through this checklist of a strong financial foundation and we talk about having a student loan repayment plan here in No. 3. I would point you to a great resource that was written by Tim Church, “The Ultimate Guide for Pharmacy Student Loan Repayment,” where it’s a blog post, really more of a mini e-book. He did an awesome job of going through a comprehensive, in-depth look at student loan repayment. And you can access that for free at YourFinancialPharmacist.com/ultimate.

OK, so that’s No. 3, Having a Student Loan Repayment. No. 4 is we have to Prepare for the Catastrophic, perhaps the least exciting part of the plan to be thinking about. So here, we’re talking about insurance, right? And while there’s many types of insurance that we want to be thinking about, of course health, auto, home, renter’s, etc., the ones I’m mainly spending time here on in No. 4 is professional liability, term life, and long-term disability. Now we’ve talked about these on the show before, Episode 155 we talked about the importance of professional liability insurance, what it is, why it’s important, who needs it, what to look for when shopping for a policy. So I’d check that out. We also have a great resource on term life and long-term disability. If you go to YourFinancialPharmacist.com main page and click on “Insurance,” you’ll see that information there. And my encouragement for you in this section as we talk about insurance briefly is please take the time to really understand these policies, as non-exciting as it may be, these are incredibly important. And I think this is an area where it’s easy to either be under- or over-insured. And both of those are things that we want to try to avoid. Right? Of course, under-insured, if we have a need for something like term life insurance or long-term disability and we don’t have that policy, that could perhaps be catastrophic to the financial plan, especially as we’re doing the hard work in the other areas that we’ve already talked about. But the other side of the equation also has a cost associated with it, right? If we have a policy which perhaps is more than we need or is not a best fit for our current needs in our financial plan, then that means those are dollars that are going towards a certain part of the financial plan that perhaps we could allocate elsewhere, whether that be investing or debt repayment or another part of the financial plan. So both are important. And this is an area I talk with pharmacists commonly about. And this is an area where I think that someone like a fee-only financial planner can really help provide objective advice and really be able to point someone in the right direction where they don’t necessarily have a vested interest in terms of how those policies are being sold. So make sure to check out some of the resources here on professional liability, Episode 155, and then term life/long-term disability by going to YourFinancialPharmacist.com, clicking on “Insurance.”

No. 5 here is Developing a Plan for Long-Term Investing. And we have talked extensively on the show about investing, from some of the basics, you know, in terms of what are the different accounts, whether that’s a 401k, a 403b, a Roth IRA, a traditional IRA, HSAs and so forth, and you can find all of that on previous shows. We’ve got more information on the website. We’ve also talked about things like the priority of investing. So you know, if we know we need to save each and every month, well, how do we begin to think about the priority? Right? We’ve got considerations around employer-sponsored retirement accounts, individual accounts, perhaps some other investment opportunities like real estate. And so how do we begin to think about the priority of investing? Very important topic. We’ve also talked about things like fees and how do we keep fees low? And if at the end of the day we’re going to be doing the hard work to save, how do we make sure we’re doing that in a way that is tax-efficient and we’re doing that in a way that is minimizing the fees that might eat away at that investment. So I would encourage you to think about at least the beginnings — remember, we’re talking about the foundation here — the beginnings of your long-term investing plan in three stages. And that is setting the vision, Part 1, then determining what the need is or how much to achieve that vision, that’s Part 2, and then we get into the x’s and o’s in Part 3 of actually determining how much are we going to save every month and where are we going to allocate those funds? And within those funds, how are we going to determine what we’re investing in, which aligns with our goals, which aligns with our risk tolerance and all of the other things that I’ve previously mentioned.

And so this is an area that I think for folks that are really at the beginning of their financial journey or even folks that maybe are listening and you’ve amassed a half a million a million dollars of wealth just through consistent, regular contributions into tax-advantaged retirement accounts but necessarily haven’t dug into the details or thought about how to take that to the next level, right? Both of those could apply. And so my encouragement for both groups and folks that are in between there is to really take a step back and ask yourself, what is the vision for my long-term investing plan? I mentioned at the beginning, money is simply a tool. What’s my vision for retirement? What does that look like? What do I want to do? What do I want to accomplish? Because that’s going to then inform how much do I need? Once I know what the vision, once I know what I want to accomplish, I can then start to determine OK, how much am I going to need to be able to make that a reality? Now, for those of you that have done this step, how much you need, you might have run some numbers in a nest egg calculator, it’s a topic that I often talk about when we’re speaking and sometimes I’ll even have folks that will go through that in real time. And inevitably, anytime we go through a nest egg calculation, you can see kind of that glossed-over look when you punch in the numbers and you hit “Calculate,” and you see that number that’s $3, $4, $5, $6 million. And it becomes number one, very overwhelming and number two, it feels very abstract in the moment. Whether retirement is 20 years away, 10 years away or 40 years away, that can be a big number that it’s hard to say, what does that actually means today? What do I do with that number, right? And so I think a good financial plan will really take that information and distill it down to OK, let’s discount that information back to today’s numbers, what does that mean for how much we need to be saving each and every month, and then let’s begin to put a plan in place and automate that plan so we’re contributing in a tax-efficient manner, we’re keeping the fees low, and we’re allowing compound interest to do its magic and time value of money to take its course. Right? And so we’ve got to bring it into terms that allow us to digest this and make it real or otherwise we’re going to get some of that paralysis analysis, five years goes by, 10 years go by, and we feel like we’re trying to play catch-up on our investing plan.

So as we walk through these five steps, we talked about developing and automating a monthly system, No. 1. We talked about knocking out the baby steps, No. 2. We talked about having a student loan repayment plan, No. 3. Preparing for the catastrophic, No. 4. And then No. 5, developing or perhaps accelerating your long-term investing plan. And for those that are listening, I want you to imagine for a moment, I want you to imagine for a moment that you’ve got a sound monthly system in place that accounts for all of your goals. You’ve thought through the things that are most important to you. You’ve looked at your current expenses. You’ve built in those goals into a monthly system, and you’ve automated the savings to begin to realize those goals. Imagine that just for a moment. I want you to imagine for those that are struggling with ‘I need to really flesh out and build out the emergency fund,’ or ‘I need to knock out that credit card debt,’ what would it feel like if you no longer had any credit card debt? What would it feel like if you had a fully-funded emergency fund? What’s next after that? For those that are thinking about their student loans, right, it’s hard to often look at other things when you’ve got a huge balance of student loans. As I highlighted earlier, yeah, you know, getting that to $0 is a goal, of course. But what would it feel like if you had a plan, knowing that you’ve evaluated all of the options, all of the federal options, forgiveness, non-forgiveness, private, etc., you’ve looked at the numbers, you’ve thought about the other considerations, you’ve determined a path forward that is best for you personal situation, and you’ve determined a plan that now allows you to look at your monthly expenses knowing that you’ve put a plan in place that that repayment option is best for your personal situation and you know exactly what that’s going to cost each and every month to achieve that goal and when you’re going to have that debt paid off? What would it feel like for those that are thinking, you know, ‘Am I underinsured when it comes to things like long-term disability or term life?’ or perhaps folks that are feeling like, ‘You know what, I bought a policy awhile ago that maybe wasn’t a good fit.’ What would it feel like if that got shored up? If we really looked at making sure we’ve got the right amount of insurance, not too much and not too little. And what would it feel like if we had a sound vision for the future of our financial plan in terms of what retirement may look like? And how much we would need to accomplish that goal and what it would take on a month-by-month basis — and of all of the financial lingo of 401k’s and IRAs and HSAs and brokerage accounts and all of these other options that we had a plan and path forward, knowing that we’re saving x per month with this goal, and we’re going to do it in this account with this strategy?

So I think as we think about those, even as I’m reflecting on those in my own personal journey, you know, there’s always work to be done. Right? Whether, as I mentioned at the beginning, whether you’re listening and have a net worth of $1 million or net worth of -$500,000, there’s always work to be done. And while there’s always work to be done, wow, what a different position and mindset to be in when we can operate from a place knowing that we’ve got a strong foundation upon which we can build the rest of our financial plan. And so I’d be remiss here if I didn’t highlight that what we do at YFP Planning, one-on-one comprehensive financial planning, this is it, right? We’re looking at every situation on an individual basis to determine what does this foundation look like for you or for a pharmacist who’s really trying to focus on accelerating the second half of their career, is approaching retirement and wants to really think about more of the distribution phase and what’s involved in that from a tax standpoint. One-on-one financial planning allows us to really dig deep and really evaluate your situation on an individual basis. And so I would encourage folks if that’s something that you’ve been thinking about, you can schedule a free discovery call to determine whether or not what we offer is a good fit for you. You can do that at YFPPlanning.com, you can schedule a discovery call and learn more about what that looks like.

As always, I appreciate you joining for this week’s episode of the Your Financial Pharmacist podcast. And I think we have an exciting second half of the year ahead. If you’ve liked what you heard on this episode or previous episodes, please do us a favor and leave a rating and review on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to your podcasts each and every week. That’s how more pharmacy professionals can help them to find this show and ultimately help us on our mission of helping as many pharmacists as possible achieve financial freedom. Have a great rest of your day.

Current Student Loan Refinance Offers

Advertising Disclosure

[wptb id="15454" not found ]

Recent Posts

[pt_view id=”f651872qnv”]