The Physician's Guide To Financial Wellness Trent DeBruin, Andrew Musbach

Over the past two years, there has been a dramatic increase in interest rates from historically low levels, the impact of which has been felt by everyone, regardless of stage of life. In this episode, we take a closer look at this dynamic. We start by explaining what an interest rate is, provide some historical context for how the current environment compares to prior periods, talk about how the impact of higher interest rates varies depending on the stage of life you’re in, and wrap things up by sharing some potential strategies and opportunities that are presented by higher interest rates.
Resources & People Mentioned Download our guide: The Toolkit for Optimizing Your Finances as an Employed Physician Download our guide: The Financial Checkup Connect With Trent and Andrew https://mdwmllc.com  Follow on LinkedIn Follow on Facebook
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As we head toward open enrollment season, this episode is dedicated to a deeper dive into Health Savings Accounts (or HSAs). As the title implies, this is one of our favorite financial accounts, and in this episode, we explain why. We start by outlining exactly what an HSA is, talk about the triple tax benefit of it, discuss the investment component of an HSA, touch on some of the different things you can spend HSA money on (including a surprising expense in retirement), and then bring it all together by sharing some of the strategies around an HSA and how we prefer to use it within a financial plan. 
Resources & People Mentioned Episode #25: Planning for Healthcare In Retirement Download our guide: The Toolkit for Optimizing Your Finances as an Employed Physician Download our guide: The Financial Checkup Connect With Trent and Andrew https://mdwmllc.com  Follow on LinkedIn Follow on Facebook
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In this episode of the podcast, we discuss five of the most common investment mistakes people make: 1) Waiting for the “right” time to invest, 2) Anticipatory selling, 3) Buying into (or buying more of) the latest “hot” stock or investment trend, 4) Concentrating in one stock or one area of the investment universe, and 5) Chasing income, yield, or a similar theme. 
For each mistake, we explain what drives it, how it typically materializes, and what you can do to avoid falling victim to it. The universal theme underlying each mistake is human behavior and emotion, which makes for an interesting discussion of how to fight our natural survival tendencies that, unfortunately, don’t serve us well as investors.
Resources & People Mentioned Episode #48: Lump Sum of Cash to Invest – All at Once or Gradually?   Episode #53: How to Manage Your Retirement Paycheck During a Market Decline Download our guide: The Toolkit for Optimizing Your Finances as an Employed Physician Download our guide: The Financial Checkup Connect With Trent and Andrew https://mdwmllc.com  Follow on LinkedIn Follow on Facebook Subscribe to The Physician’s Guide To Financial Wellness
on Apple Podcast, Spotify, and Google Podcast

In this episode of the podcast, we do a deep dive into the topic of health insurance. We start out by reviewing some of the key definitions and terminology related to health insurance. We then transition into discussing how to think about your health insurance coverage and how that thought process changes over time. 
From there, we move on to a breakdown of the two key phases of health insurance (pre-65 and post-65) and talk about the planning opportunities that are available within each phase. And lastly, we wrap up our discussion by explaining how to apply the information and framework of this episode to your own situation in order to create the best health insurance plan for you.
Resources & People Mentioned Episode #25: Planning for Healthcare in Retirement  Download our guide: The Toolkit for Optimizing Your Finances as an Employed Physician Download our guide: The Financial Checkup healthcare.gov Connect With Trent and Andrew https://mdwmllc.com  Follow on LinkedIn Follow on Facebook
Subscribe to The Physician’s Guide To Financial Wellness
on Apple Podcast, Spotify, and Google Podcast

In this episode of the podcast, we dive into the always-fun topic of life insurance. We start out by sharing an overview of life insurance and discussing the purpose of it. We then transition into the three general life stages (early-career, mid-career, and late-career/retirement), explaining how your life insurance need changes at each stage and sharing tips and strategies for how to ensure that you have the coverage you need, for the time you need it, while paying as little as possible for it. 
Resources & People Mentioned Episode #14: Insurance for Physicians – What Types & Amounts You Actually Need Download our guide: The Toolkit for Optimizing Your Finances as an Employed Physician Download our guide: The Financial Checkup Connect With Trent and Andrew https://mdwmllc.com  Follow on LinkedIn Follow on Facebook Subscribe to The Physician’s Guide To Financial Wellness
on Apple Podcast, Spotify, and Google Podcast

When it comes to saving and investing for retirement, we all have a certain amount of tax-advantaged saving space available to us through a combination of employer retirement accounts and personal retirement accounts. However, for many physicians there comes a point where you’re maxing out all of these retirement accounts and still have money left over to save and invest, so it’s natural to wonder “What’s next?” in terms of where you should then allocate money. For us, the answer is often a taxable investment account, and in this episode, we explain why.
Outline of this episode  What’s the best place to save and invest after Retirement accounts are maxed? [0:23]
The drawbacks of taxable accounts [2:35]
Why these taxable accounts are preferable to cash or doing nothing [5:44]
There are some attractive tax aspects to these accounts [13:01]
Legacy planning can be simpler and can save funds with these accounts [19:26]
Recap [23:20] What a taxable account is and how it fits as an option For those of you who have maxed out their tax advantage accounts, and we strongly advise maxing out these accounts before using this, a taxable account is the next best option. We'll start out by clarifying the terminology since as with many other areas of personal finance there's no shortage of jargon here. For the purposes of our discussion, we'll refer to it as a taxable account, but you'll also commonly hear it referred to as a brokerage account, a joint account, or an individual account, but it's essentially an account that you can open similar to a bank account. However, unlike a bank account where you earn a set percentage of interest based on the amount of money in the account with a taxable account, you can invest the money in mutual funds, ETFs, stocks, bonds, et cetera, with the expectation that it'll grow over time. These are easy to open and can provide good benefits over time.
The drawbacks of taxable accounts  Obviously, you don’t get the tax benefits from these accounts that you would with typical retirement-focused accounts. You’re going to make contributions to these accounts with money that’s already been taxed and you will also pay taxes on the growth of these accounts, over time. There are nuances, including qualified dividends, the interest paid on municipal bonds, and a few others. You can also pay taxes on the gains you make when selling these investments. Money invested here won’t grow as much as you would experience in non-taxable accounts.
What you’ll like about taxable accounts You get a higher return on your investments. Not limited to cash, so you can invest with the potential of higher returns. While there is no guarantee that any investment will provide profitable returns, there are historical numbers we can consider. Historically, stock market returns average annual returns of around 10%, while the bond market has historically provided an annual return of around 5%. Historically, inflation has ranged between a 2% to 3% increase, so cash, which historically only provides around a 2% return, doesn’t yield any return when adjusted for inflation. These accounts provide you the opportunity to earn a higher return, but they also provide great flexibility when it comes to your investments, much greater than what you'll experience with tax-favored accounts. You’ll also experience SOME tax benefits in certain situations or with certain types of investments.
Resources & People Mentioned Episode #20: The Waterfall of Retirement Savings by Account
Episode #45: A Deeper Dive on Roth IRA Conversions
Download our guide: The Toolkit for Optimizing Your Finances as an Employed Physician
Download our guide: The Financial Checkup
Connect With Trent and Andrew https://mdwmllc.com 
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Subscribe to The Physician’s Guide To Financial Wellness
on Apple Podcast, Spotify, and Google Podcast