Financial experts have found strategies for living, saving, and investing that can take someone with even a modest income and make them financially independent later in life. For doctors, these same strategies should create affluence. Yet, many doctors do not experience any real substantial net-worth.
Being a doctor should nor more be about making money than the body is about making blood. On the other hand, it’s difficult to thrive without blood or money.
After a decade of more conventional chiropractic coaching, I added money consulting to my focus. Why? Because after coaching 5,000+ chiropractors and chiropractic students, I had watched some of the most loving, caring, and giving doctors go totally off the rails because of money.
While the love of money may be the root of all evil as the Bible states, money is required to sustain us all and give us choices for our future. If money isn’t coming in, isn’t growing, and hasn’t brought us to a place of financial freedom, then stress and frustration are inevitable; and chiropractors are often forced to take their careers in a direction they never wanted to.
Growing up, my mother used to say two things to me about money:
- The best way to help the poor is to not become one of them.
- Rich or poor, it’s good to have money.
Something I share quite a bit—because I have seen this dozens of times and always find it disturbing—is passing the hat. This is when a chiropractor dies, often decades into practice, and we have to pass the hat or start a GoFundMe account. Now, I think we should always do that to take financial strain off of a grieving family. But the hat and the GoFundMe are for survival, or to send the kids to school, or to keep them living as they’ve been accustomed to. They’re needed because, despite all the years the doctor and the family gave to the practice or career, there was not enough resources for the doctor to move on without the income from the practice.
Chiropractic is the best healthcare in the world. Thus, chiropractors should be the wealthiest doctors in the world. So why are they not? It’s simply a lack of training and economic skills and certainly not reflective of their value.
Here are just two of 7 core financial concepts that can solve most doctor’s issues with money and take them from financial independence on to financial affluence:
1. Pay yourself first. My son just graduated college and got his first job. Despite the fact that his early years in his career in business analytics won’t produce the kind of money a doctor can make during those same years, we have mapped out a plan for him to be debt free with a quarter of a million in the bank in 4 years. Immediately, we have set up the correct, tax-deferred investment account and the first check he writes each month goes to maximizing that part of the plan. There’s an investment number with a timeline to pay off the debt this year as well as setting up a second stream of income that will go into another investment account.
Here’s what that tax-deferred strategy, paid first, will look like as he moves into his future: If my son contributes the max $5,500 to a tax-deferred plan every year between now and when he hits 59 at a 7% average, just this one account alone will provide substantive wealth.
2. Create an exit strategy – even if you never plan to leave the practice. Here are a few questions you need to ask yourself about this:
- Do you know your financial number? The one you need in order to never work again? You may want to keep working, but whether you do or not should be your choice. Also, God forbid something happens to you or your ability to work. This number represents the amount you will need so that your lifestyle and your family are still properly supported.
- If money didn’t matter, how would you practice, or what would you do? How would you serve if you didn’t need the cash? Deciding this makes for a clear exit. I have exited a few times now. I get to do what I love without it being about the money.
- Is your legacy in place? Are the kids’ and grandkids’ college funds all set? No one in my downline will likely ever need money for college.
- Are you a slave to money or is it a slave to you? Learn how to love to serve and make money work for you so you do not spend your life on money. Money should be going to do the work for you and not the other way around.
Over time and as success builds, you should become more and more and more free and not more encumbered.
You can’t say you want financial affluence, but haven’t mastered finances. You don’t get the future you want; you get the one you trained for. I am here to help. I look forward to working with you to give you the future you want, the choices you desire, and the affluence you every chiropractor deserves.
Have fun saving the world
Dr. Ben
