In addition to the pleasure that I get from learning and building new things, there are several reasons why I have chosen to focus on building The Loonie Doctor.
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Personal finance is important for everyone & there is a gap to be filled.
Poor financial health is one piece of the burn-out problem in medicine. Conversely, a strong financial position and healthy relationship with money can help us to realize our full potential. Not just in our practices, but in our lives and community. While I write from the perspective of a physician, this applies to anyone. Basic financial literacy is strongly linked to wealth – even when controlled for education level.
If they lack financial literacy, even graduates of professional schools have poor financial outcomes. I learned my most important personal finance lessons from my parents, who had middle class jobs. They were able to raise a family and live a wealthy life. Unfortunately, many Canadians have not had that financial mentoring. I want to help fill that gap & improve outcomes.
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Many high-income professionals go from rags to riches with no financial mentoring.
Our careers offer more flexibility and potential than most “jobs”, but are also more difficult to contain. Usually, we have a long period of negative income and debt accrual. Then, a high-income. Psychologically, that doesn’t give us time to grow into our income. We may not have friends or family who have experienced this situation, and our physician culture has not been helpful either.
Most people make financial decisions that are constrained by their income. That limitation is more malleable for high-income professionals, freeing us to make larger bad ones. We can also make great choices made possible by our financial and professional freedom. I have made both. Together, we can shift the balance by sharing with each other.
We have the power to make a major impacts by being good financial stewards of our money. I can leverage my impact exponentially, if I help you do that.
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The stakes are high for us to efficiently turn income into wealth.
Mathematically, our compressed timeframe presents a couple of challenges. We must invest well to make up for lost time and compounding. Radical income fluctuations within our progressive tax system makes tax planning very important. We also do not usually have a group pension or benefits to fall back on. The stakes are high.
Due to our abundance of money and lack of time, there are many commercial interests willing to fill the gap. For a price. I want to help you fill the gap, driven by your interests, at no cost to you.
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We must interact with financial professionals, but still be the common link for our finances.
We will all need to build a financial team and lead it. If we don’t lead it, then it won’t always be our interests driving it. Plus, no one can link your financial life together like you can. In the end, you live with the result. You need some basic knowledge to be able to lead your team. I want to help you to make educated decisions on DIY vs delegating financial tasks. Whether the complex products or solutions are the best option for you, or suitable but best for the people selling them.
You want to know enough to ensure that you are getting good value for the money that you spend outsourcing financial tasks or buying financial products. I want to help you learn how.
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High-income professionals get pitched complex products and solutions.
General personal finance sites usually say “don’t bother”. That is the correct answer for the vast majority of the population. However, there may be some uses for high-income professionals. Boutique approaches and products may be useful, they make us feel special and sophisticated, but there are also usually simple effective alternatives.
Simply telling a high-income professional that it is “too complicated for you” is not usually a good strategy. That is like throwing down the gauntlet. We are used to solving complicated and don’t want to be patronized. We also have the same fear of missing out when we hear others talk and sound sophisticated about finance as everyone else.
I don’t want you to miss out. I want you to take action. That may be using a simple approach with the confidence that you can execute it and aren’t missing out. It may be using a more complex approach, but understanding why and how to most effectively.