Planning for doctors – Page 3

Goals – What do I really want?

April 13, 2021April 13, 2021
by Gregory Fok

What do you really want to achieve in taking this particular action or buying a certain product? It is usually not about the cheapest products or lowest fees. That will create a different set of problems in financial planning down the road. Unknowing to most consumers, we make decisions emotionally without understanding why we do it. Most of it is highly motivated by fear and greed in the short term. That is where the problem lies – where there is impatience and no discipline to keep us aligned to our objectives.

So what is our end goal objective? For most people, it will be to help you achieve the extremely big goals in life like retirement, education for kids and ensure that you have peace of mind of cashflow when health or unexpected turn of events in life fails on you. On top of that, you would also want to be generous to the people around you when you have surplus due to a well thought out, methodical plan with a financial artist. You would like to reduce risks and taxes legally. You would also like to improve your higher expected returns predictably over the long term with increased peace of mind knowing there is a scientific evidenced-based approach to growing wealth systemically.

The more intangible objectives will be to be able to spend more time with yourself, your family and personal goals whatever that might be and to take away the strong emotions of greed and fear away from you.

With the above in place, you can spend your time fruitfully with the people you love, and on the passions that are close to your heart, led with a meaningful life.

Have you spent some time to have a chat to share your personal goals and what kind of experience you would like to achieve for yourself. We can start by having an initial complimentary conversation to see if there is a good fit between an experienced financial artist and yourself to understand you better.

Why should doctors invest differently?

February 22, 2021February 22, 2021
by Gregory Fok

As a doctor, you definitely have a great future ahead of you and will continue to be able to excel if you plan well and efficiently. Why should you invest differently from other people in general? Here are some pointers you need to take note of as it is often neglected by doctors.

Tax implications

You will probably end up hitting the highest tax bracket earlier than most professions. It also means that you will end up paying the highest tax bracket. Due to that, you need to try to ensure you pay fair income tax.

For an asset class like property, adding extra income to yourself through rental means that you will pay additional income tax at the highest tax bracket, over and above all the other maintenance costs incurred!

For an asset class of stocks and equities in other countries, you will subject yourself to additional tax which can be as high as 50% in some countries. If a person continues to hold on to that asset class, your family members will need to pay for inheritance tax when there is that wealth transfer eventually.

You make more money focusing on your practice than trying to time the stock market

Since you are able to earn a decent income, you will automatically be curious to find out how you can let your money work harder. As a retail investor, you tend to try to find a way to buy the right company, at the right time and sell it off at a profit and constantly find new opportunities. However, after a period of trying, you realize that it can be very tiring to keep chasing the next deal as not all opportunities work out well. You would be better off spending time focused on your patients and improving your skill to be able to earn more.

Emotional roller coaster

When you try to invest on your own, you tend to have to make decisions of whether to buy, hold or sell. As the markets can get volatile from time to time, you might get emotionally charged up just before a surgery or seeing a patient. You get distracted from your core work as a doctor and usually is not helpful in making decisions in your work. On top of that, when you are making decisions for your investments, being emotionally charged through greed and fear causes you to make multiple mistakes.

Taking an extreme caution towards your career choice and finances

Most doctors did not really choose their profession. They usually are smart and have good grades. The selection to be a doctor is usually a natural choice by default. Anyway, it is prestigious and not everyone could get into medical school. Due to that reason, most doctors are very careful and not too adventurous in nature, especially when it comes to their finances.. But if they were smart to tweak their asset allocation just by a little bit, on their overall portfolio, they would have gotten very different results over the next 20+ years, very often even double or triple the difference, if they are patient enough.

In short, we understand how doctors think and want to partner you to achieve your personalized dreams and goals in life. Through our 16 years of experience, we are able to value add to you so that you get back more time for yourself, minimize your taxes in investing, reduce your risks significantly while multiplying your net-worth. After all, isn’t that what you want, for a better lifestyle for yourself and family?

When is the right time to invest?

January 21, 2021January 22, 2021
by Gregory Fok

This is a question that I get asked alot. I used to ask myself this question many times as well.

You said…

Market is too high, you will buy when it crashes.

Market crashes, you said the worst is not over.

Market recovers, and you said it is a dead cat bounce.

Market breaks new high, and you said it is expensive.

Sounds familiar?

Look, the market is never the problem.

You will never know the right time, just like you never know when the whale will jump out of the water to let you take that perfect shot. However, evidence investing shows that decades after decades of investing, the markets will only continue to go higher over time, punctuated with a few recessions from time to time. But markets always go up over the long term.

Instead, determine your personal goals and time horizon and allow us to construct a CORRE portfolio with an asset allocation according to that.

Indeed, it is hard to time, just buy the entire market across the globe with the ability to get higher expected returns. Then, sit back, enjoy your coffee and focus on your life dreams!

If you really still need an answer to the question… If you had started to invest into a CORRE portfolio at least 10 years ago, you would be kicking yourself for not doing anything despite the swings of the markets. This statement would have been true 98% of the time.

Let time and I be your best friend.

Tax optimization for doctor and high-income earners

September 15, 2020September 15, 2020
by Gregory Fok

As a doctor or a high-income earner, you eventually will reach the point of paying quite a lot of tax. The way you plan your investments will have an impact on you for your own personal financial planning.

Did you know that there is tax implications in the following areas.

ETF

Many people buy ETFs with the main intent of lowering their cost. However, when you are holding onto ETFs, you can potentially attract fairly high tax implications. And some can even be as high as almost 30%. On top of that, there can be low cost option funds that might be even lower than the cost of your ETFs which we do provide as an alternative.

Foreign shares

Holding foreign shares also attracts estate duties which can go up to as high as 40% or more in certain countries. One of the common markets where people buy shares is in the US. They adopt a buy and hold strategy. If a person had built a retirement plan through owning US shares, he will easily have built it to almost a million or more down the road. However, if a person suddenly passes on, the estate will be liable for a very expensive estate tax to the US as a non resident. And we all know that US has one of the highest estate tax in the world.

Singapore Property

As doctors, with high income ability, there is an attraction to purchase property in a country we are familiar with in Singapore. However, there are various huge tax obligations such as ABSD (Additional Buyer Stamp duties), SSD (Seller Stamp Duties), property tax and income tax. The portion that most doctors ignore is the part where you are taxed heavily based on your income. Given that the yield and income from property is already so low, having to pay an additional tax at 22% every year just makes it very unappealing as an investment option. However, most doctors and high income earners might not even be aware of this fact, or they are too busy being the expert in their field.

We specialize in working with doctors, wealthy families and high-income earners find investment options that can help you achieve the same results or better with little or no tax implications. That is where our expertise comes into play over here to value add. Can you imagine saving hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars eventually? Wouldn’t that help if you just spent 20mins of your time for an initial conversation with the expert?

Connect with us for an initial chat just to see if there is a fit.

Should I be my own doctor?

June 15, 2020June 15, 2020
by Gregory Fok

If you had an option, you could go to a part time junior doctor under going training and ask him to do a surgery on you.

Or you could go to a trusted experienced surgeon who has seen 1000s of patients and have been doing this for the past 15yrs and could immediately understand your problem, get a diagnosis and help you to draft a treatment plan.

Which will you prefer?

When it comes to family wealth planning and investing, you might unknowingly be doing the same.

We have seen consumers trying to DIY. They take an approach where they try to read the markets, trends, study companies and grow their wealth, protect their income, family and do all this part time whilst they are busy working in their main job.

At best, after all your effort you put in as a consumer, you become a part time surgeon with minimal experience to speak of.

Would you be confident to allow yourself to be operated by this part time surgeon, who does not have enough experience seeing enough patients to operate on you?

If you do not, please instead spend time to interview and look for a trusted advisor whom you can journey with on the long term and provide holistic financial advice.

It saves you lots of time, money and emotional pain. All that time and energy can be then converted to spend time with your loved ones and fill it up with your passions in life that are important to you.

Go and spend your time to live a life of possibilities!

Common overlooked fact by doctors

June 10, 2020June 10, 2020
by Gregory Fok

As doctors, you spend most of your time focusing on your craft as a medical specialist..

Your work demands long hours and you even sometimes have to skip meals. We specialize in working with doctors so we understand what you go through. All your time is spent either working or studying with hardly any time left. If you get married and have kids young, it accelerates the sleep deprivation cycle.

Time passes so quickly and by the time you get a little more control on your life, you are probably about almost 40 years old. That is the main reason why most doctors might eventually decide to move to private clinics or set up their own medical practice before the control happens.

Whilst the busyness of life takes over, health deteriorates and some doctors might get hit with the same medical conditions that they were treating the patients for.

When that happens, the income flow suddenly stops.. Life is affected, work is affected, income is affected, but expenses of the house mortgage, the car, the family continue. If you have your own clinic, you still got to pay rental, pay for equipment, pay for staff salary and the list goes on…

What if you took a few minutes every year just to review your overall financial situation and ensure that your income can be intact and even have a sinking fund that can tide you and your family over the next 10-20yrs without a need to worry when bad things happens?

Wouldn’t that few minutes of that precious conversation allow you to have more financial freedom and protection?

We specialize in working with doctors and know what you go through. Let us have an initial chat.

Why do doctors have more challenge talking about money?

June 8, 2020June 8, 2020
by Gregory Fok

Through my 15 years of experience working together with doctors, surprisingly, I have realized that they find it hard to talk about and understand money, especially if you are working in the government hospitals. Of course, there are exceptions, but they are few.

Those who have come out to private hospitals and set up their own medical clinic will have a slightly better grasp at this because they have to calculate their costs and expenses in rental, hiring and paying for medical equipment as they are no longer protected by the big institution. But they still struggle over time, with other issues.

Here are 3 main reasons why doctors avoid conversations around money.

As a doctor, you should be dispensing medical advice and a treatment plan to the patient. Being trained in the government medical fraternity, you always put patient care as your priority. Any discussion of the financial implications usually is dealt with by another department within the hospital. There are also other issues such as subsidies and government support that may not be in your purview.

Most doctors fall into the vulnerable group, as they fall prey to many people who are looking into their deeper pockets due to their income ability. Doctors are the target of scams and deals that can go bad as well. They usually turn to their peers who are doctors for financial advice, who may not necessarily be better versed or trained than themselves. And they are deemed to be “smart” enough to know the difference between a scam and a real investment but no one is there to understand their real struggle.

Doctors have a lack of formal education around money. There is no formal course in business or financial management in medical school or residency. They spend decades learning about the science and the anatomy of the body and how it works but have no time left to learning about money management, so whey they first received their first paycheck, the first initial instinct is to finally splurge it or keep it under the carpet for they do not know better.

If you are a doctor and would like to receive some form of on-going education and pick the brains of an ethical trusted source, with experience and wisdom, you can always sign up and attend our webinars on education on financial planning for doctors. It is purely educational, specifically for doctors only.