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

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

About Today’s Guest

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

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

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

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

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

Episode Summary

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

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

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

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

Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode

• YFP Planning: Financial Planning for Pharmacists
• Schedule a free Discovery Call with YFP Planning
• The Advantaged: Yacht Charters & Sales
• ZenBusiness
• Your Financial Pharmacist Disclaimer and Disclosures

Episode Transcript

[INTRODUCTION]

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

Now before we jump into the show, I recognize that many listeners may not be aware of what the team at YFP Planning does in working one-on-one with more than 280 households in 40-plus states. YFP Planning offers fee-only high-touch financial planning that is customized to the pharmacy professional. If you’re interested in learning more about working one-on-one with a certified financial planner, may help you achieve your financial goals, you can book a free discovery call at yfpplanning.com.

Whether or not YFP Planning’s financial planning services are a good fit for you, know that we appreciate your support of this podcast and our mission to help pharmacists achieve financial freedom. Okay, let’s jump into my interview with Dr. Gary Levin.

[INTERVIEW]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[0:23:46] TU: Demographic.

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

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

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

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

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

[0:26:19] TU: That’s right.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[0:36:11] TU: Yup. That’s right.

[0:36:12] GL: It’s a mountain slope.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[0:39:44] TU: That’s right.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[0:50:59] TU: That’s cool.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[END OF INTERVIEW]

[0:56:41] TU: As we conclude this week’s podcast, an important reminder that the content on this show is provided you for informational purposes only and is not intended to provide and should not be relied on for investment, or any other advice. Information in the podcast and corresponding material should not be construed as a solicitation, or offer to buy or sell any investment, or related financial products. We urge listeners to consult with a financial advisor with respect to any investment.

Furthermore, the information contained in our archive, newsletters, blog posts and podcasts is not updated and may not be accurate at the time you listen to it on the podcast. Opinions and analyses expressed herein are solely those of your financial pharmacists, unless otherwise noted, and constitute judgments as of the dates published. Such information may contain forward-looking statements, which are not intended to be guarantees of future events. Actual results could differ materially from those anticipated in the forward-looking statements. For more information, please visit yourfinancialpharmacist.com/disclaimer.

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

[END]

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