clinic craft

How exciting is that first income after the long years of study? I bought myself a Wustof-Trident chefs knife with the first intern pays as my reward, I still have it. What will you spend your money on that will stay with you?

As well as a reward, I want you to consider three important places to spend money:

• insurance – income protection, life
• financial education
• billing/medical business education

Insurance – income protection

Now is the time to apply for income protection insurance before you develop any medical conditions or anything that might preclude you from being eligible for insurance. I’ll expand on this in another post. This income protection insurance is your pay if you are unable to work. The White Coat Investor suggests that 10-20% of doctors are unable to work at some stage in their life and Australian insurer TAL has reported on the types of problems people claim insurance for.

Financial Education

This can really pay long term dividends. This can be as simple as some bibliotherapy – Barefoot Investor, White Coat Bootcamp there are many out there. This might be as specific as financial advisor advice, ensuring you pay per hour and not a funds under management/retainer based process

Business/Medical Billing Education

This really is part of the hidden curriculum. Understand how to appropriately, ethically and correctly use the billing options is very important. Self education is the simplest and cheapest – reading the MBS guides, completing the online tutorials is a first step.

In Australia with have Business for Doctors and AOGP providing billing information training.

amazon link

Jim Dahle is the White Coat investor and head of the website, forum and podcast of the same name. Although American in focus there are many lessons for doctors in his book.  This book grew from a 12 email set that he sends out to new subscribers to his book – so for free you can get most of the information in this book by joining his email list.  This book follows up from the email series, provides more context and examples and more appendices and task lists.   This book is also an expansion of his much slimmer 2014 book.

Contents are:

1. Disability (income) insurance
2. Life Insurance
3. Spending plan
4. Student loan plan
5. Boosting income
6. Housing plan
7. Retirement accounts
8. Investing
9. Correcting Mistakes
10. Saving for college
11. Estate plan
12. Asset Protection

List of Missions

Conclusion

Appendix A Recommended Books

Appendix B Financial Priority List for attending Physicians

Appendix C An example of a written Financial Plan

Appendix D Glossary

Buy it: great mindset advice about avoiding the expensive doctors house, doctors car and not giving in to debt based lifestyle inflation. Good tickbox lists, the example financial plan is excellent.  I bought it to share with registrars.

Skip it: student loans, Retirement accounts are not applicable for us, but a small part of the book.

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