10 Money Rules Doctors and Health Professionals Must Know for Financial wellness in 2024

Dive into the second half of our money wise rule starting with Rule 6 embrace the power of passive investing. Investing doesn't have to be complex. In fact, we'll explore in more details in future videos the power of passive investing and how it can help you grow your wealth. There's been multiple, multiple, multiple academic studies that have demonstrated that passive investors who actually just buy a broad based index fund in a simple way actually perform better than 9 out of 10 active money managers who their job is day and night stocks and bonds, financial market, but still they somehow manage not to perform as well as passive investors. That's a whole total new video on its own that we can discuss in details. But for now, note Rule 6 embrace the power of passive investing. Now if you're ready, we can jump on to Rule 7. So Rule 7 says find your financial dream team. Only competent advisors. Now make sure while you're on the journey, even though you turn out to be your own chief financial officer or you might need some advice along the line. If you must need an accountant, a financial advisor, if you needed a mortgage broker, insurance broker, whatever advice you need, make sure that you're only going for people who are qualified. I mean, think about it this way. As a doctor or nurse, a healthcare professional, before you had the license to even start seeing a patient, you had to have some training and certification. So your finances are also very important. So if you're going to entrust that care to someone or you're going to get any advice, make sure that they have the qualification. If they're an accountant, they've got the license to practice, their financial advisor, they've been certified and that's just the beginning. That's not enough. The second thing to do is to check that they've got the right reviews. I don't want anyone reviewed them and vouched for different platforms. And then the third thing is find out if they've got experience dealing with doctors like you, healthcare professionals like you, do they understand the nhs? There's a lot of times, there are a lot of people who brand themselves as financial advisors or different things, but a lot of times they're actually just sales people who are just disguising as advisors. So you need to find out, do a bit of research. Now this is part of what we do and moneywisedoctor.com for you. We tend to vet financial advisors, vet insurance advisors, and make sure that the ones that are able to make it into our select list on our platform are the ones who have the right credentials, the right experience and the right reviews. So find your own dream team of financial advisors and work with them in order to manage your own finances. That's rule seven. Now we jump right into rule eight, managing your expenses and taxes. Most times, managing expenses and taxes for doctors and healthcare professionals can sometimes feel like a game of chess. Especially because when it comes to doctors and nurses, we have a very complex system. We have the NHS pension. Then you have a different salary, you might have worked as a locum at a different time and then later you're working as a salary doctor and things can mix up and there are chances. We've had situations where a doctor rang us up from moneywisedoctor.com or send us an email to say, oh, I thought I was paying the right tax, but it turned out I had the wrong code and now HMRC is asking me to pay this extra £20,000 and I don't know where to get it. I didn't expect this to happen and they were looking to get some guidance and so basically manage your taxes and keep your expenses within reasonable rate. Obviously there are no two ways about it. If you are spending more than you earn, you're going to go broke. It doesn't matter if you're a junior doctor earning the lower tax band or any less than £50,000 or you are a multi million pound interventional cardiologist with your own center in Harley Street. If you spend more than you earn, it's only a matter of time until you're going to go broke. So keep your expenses in check and make sure that your taxes, which are also a big part of your expenses, are being optimized. Work with an accountant if you need to get any help. You need to get to make sure that you're not paying more than your fair share of taxes. So that's Rule 8. Rule 8 is a double combo. Now let's jump right into Rule 9 if you're ready for the next nugget, next money wise rule. Now let's jump straight into Rule 9 if you're still around. Rule 9 is quite crucial and I think it's really quite important for doctors, especially if you've got student loan debts or if you've got credit card debts. These are things that actually could rob you of your financial peace. So debt can be like a fever. In fact, if you don't manage it well, it can become quite a bit of an issue. I think it's quite important to manage your debt carefully. As a doctor, understand the difference between good debt and bad debt. There's a Whole video on its own that I'll be addressing in the future. But basically the summary of it is that with good debt you basically can cover it and still make money on it. Why bad debt actually sucks out your financial lifeblood. So things like high credit cards, debts and all that are things you should watch out for. Manage your debt effectively and carefully. And that takes us to the final rules. If you have stuck around till Rule 10, give yourself a round of applause and then drum roll for everyone who has stuck around to Rule 10. Because Rule 10 is sort of like tied it all together. All right, made it to Rule 10, Final 1. Plan your estate and succession. I mean it might sound like a heavy one, but it's really quite critical. You want to make sure that your hard earned assets are properly protected and they are distributed according to your wishes, even when you're gone. So this is routines when you look at things like trust and look at things like legacy planning, look at to make sure that your assets are properly protected and they go to your loved ones or the people you want them to go to when you're no longer here. So while you don't start with Rule 10, but it's something you have to start thinking about as soon as you start investing, it always turns out to be a bit harder to manage if along the line you start trying to restructure your assets. So if you can start at the beginning to start thinking. Steve Covey, who wrote one of that seminar book called 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, say begin with the end in mind. So begin with the end in mind if you're thinking of buying assets, investing in assets, begin with the end in mind. Think about how to make sure that your estate is actually sort of like protected. Now, it doesn't have to be anything major at the beginning, but it can be simple. Things like making sure that when you are buying a life insurance policy that is written into a trust and that can be done, a lot of life insurance advisors can actually help you get this written into a trust at no additional fee. Well, that concludes our 10 money wise rules. I admit it's not as good as the ten Commandments that Moses had, but I can say that mine was also written on a tablet. I hope you find it useful. I hope it helps you to become more confident in managing your finances. And if you found the video to be helpful, click on the subscribe button and share it to your colleagues who you think that might benefit from it. Until the next video, remain money wise.