Starting a New NHS Rotation? Watch This Before Your First Day

This Wednesday is a strange one for many doctors in the UK. In fact, for almost everyone working in the NHS. If you're a doctor watching this, if you stick around to the end, I've got something for you that could help you avoid some common costly mistakes that doctors make at the beginning of a new rotation, and also something that can help you take charge of your financial future and claim back tax relief on your professional expenses. You could even skip ahead to the end now and get it, but you might miss some things in the middle. So why is this Wednesday strange? Some people call it Black Wednesday, the first Wednesday in August. And whether you agree with that name or not, one thing is true: it's the day thousands of doctors in the UK start new jobs, new rotations, and new hospitals. And it's been associated in the past with a rise in medical errors. But here's one thing almost nobody talks about: there are financial mistakes doctors make in the first few weeks of a new role that are easy to make and hard to undo once you've made them. So in this video, I'm sharing 8 of those mistakes and how to avoid them. If you are starting somewhere new this week, this is what 20 minutes before you do is going to be a good investment of your time. And if you're new here, if you don't know me, you've never met me, I'm Dr. Andy Egwim. I'm a former salaried NHS GP and I've been an investor for 21 years. I've been a doctor for about 16 years now. I semi-retired at 37 after achieving financial freedom. Tax-efficient investing helped me hit financial freedom, and I left my salary job 4 years ago. Since then, I've shared what I've learned on my journey with thousands of doctors. In fact, every week about 10,000 doctors receive my weekly email newsletter, The MoneyWise Doctor, and I've written it for 3 years now. And more than 4,400 doctors have attended The MoneyWise Doctor masterclasses. Last year, I put it all together in a book, The MoneyWise Doctor, which was originally written for doctors, but somehow other people got interested and it became a bestseller when it was published in December 2025. Now, I shared all that so that you know that I actually know a bit about what I'm talking about in this video. So now let's get back to you. Here's something strange about medicine, and if you've been a doctor for any length of time, you'd have seen this. Medical school and years of training teach us how to diagnose disease, how to interpret ECGs and we can read ABGs. We can perform procedures that are complex. How to manage cardiac arrest, how to break bad news, how to save lives. But nobody teaches you how to make wise decisions with your money, things that could impact your career and your family and your long-term well-being. Nobody explains your tax code. Nobody explains why your take-home pay is not what you expected and it seems like it keeps changing. Nobody explains the NHS pension or investing or how to avoid mistakes. Stubbornly follow you for years once you make them, once you get them wrong. So if you're starting a new NHS role this month, whether as a foundation doctor, resident doctor, GP trainee, or even you're starting as a consultant, or you've just moved trust, congratulations! This is an exciting new chapter, but it's also the perfect opportunity to build good financial habits. Now, after teaching thousands of doctors, I've noticed something: the doctors who achieve financial well-being are not necessarily the ones who earn the most. They are usually the ones who avoid the biggest mistakes early with the clarity and confidence to take charge of their financial future. That's what this video is about. So some of these 8 mistakes can cost you hundreds, if not thousands of pounds. Some can cost you tens of thousands of pounds over several years if you don't pick them early and fix them. So let's just jump right into it. Number 1, never understanding your payslip. And look, I'll be honest, when I received my first NHS payslip, I barely looked at it. I looked for one thing. Has the money arrived? Yes. Perfect. That was all I cared about at that point. It turned out later that I have actually been underpaid, and that's another story for next time. But your payslip is far more than a receipt. So hidden inside it is whether you're paying the right amount of tax, whether your pension contributions are correct, whether they're being deducted correctly, whether your additional hours have been paid properly, and whether payroll has made a mistake because payroll They are great, but they're not perfect. They do make mistakes sometimes. Mistakes do happen, especially when doctors rotate between hospitals, change trust, have more than one employer, or start looking alongside an NHS job. So one payroll department assumes that another is dealing with something. A typical example is Dr. Aisha, who shared her story in the Moneywise Doctor community, NHS consultant, who shared that she was underpaid as a registrar for several years, only discovering it while chatting with a colleague in the doctor's mess. So it got corrected after a lot of strongly worded letters and emails back and forth, and she received some back pay, but it could have been caught years earlier. So this caused her unnecessary stress. Look, I'm glad it worked out in the end, but it's not always the case. Many people never discover. So don't just file your payslip away. Know what your gross pay should be. Know roughly what your take-home should be. And what normal looks like so you don't lose out when something goes wrong. You can go to NHSsalarycalculator.com and check it for free. Number 2, not claiming your tax relief on professional expenses. Look, some people have lost tens of thousands due to this over the years. It's one of the easiest wins on the whole list and one of the most commonly missed. Your professional expenses, you can claim tax relief on them. Your GMC indemnity, Royal College subscriptions, mileage between sites, even the flat rate for washing your scrubs. All of it can be claimed as tax relief. In fact, you can claim up to £2,500 per tax year through a simple form, and you can go back up to 4 years on top of the current one. So that's potentially £12,500 sitting there. If you've genuinely spent that much, you know, then you can claim it. In Chapter 5 of my book, The Moneywise Doctor, I did write about Dr. Sarah, an NHS consultant with over 15 years of service. She had diligently paid her mandatory fees like GMC, indemnity, Royal College travel, and other costs during these 15 years she worked in the NHS. Now she could go back 4 years and claim the current year, but she has missed those 10 years. So this is thousands of pounds because she didn't realize that she could claim them. So when she finally discovered the rules after attending one of our masterclasses, she could only claim for the current year plus the previous 4 years. But she wasn't able to claim all of it. She had to forfeit about £10,000 of it. Apparently lost. Now, interesting part about Dr. Sarah, which she shared, was that her husband is an accountant. So even financial experts who don't specialize in doctors' finances or don't understand the NHS system can miss these nuances. So don't miss out on claiming tax relief on your professional expenses. After April 5th, you lose another year. I've had dozens of doctors message me after finally doing this, either using one of our resources. I recall a locum GP who claimed about £9,500, and I remember a psychiatry doctor as well who claimed close to £10,000. Now, many doctors go several years without realising they've never claimed a single one. Don't make the same mistake. Mistake 3: Ignoring your tax code. That sounds incredibly boring. But it could save you a lot of money. Please take a minute to look at your payslip. Every August, thousands of doctors rotate, and irrespective of what it is, foundation training starts and ends, specialty training begins, consultants change hospitals, and GPs change employers. But there's an issue with that. I mean, many doctors suddenly appear to HMRC as though they have two jobs, and that's when they problems start. You may end up on an emergency tax code, a temporary one, or one that simply doesn't reflect your true circumstances. The result is that you could pay far too much tax or too little tax and then get a brown envelope letter to say you owe us some tax. The goal is not to avoid paying tax. We all benefit from public services, but the goal is to pay the right amount and not overpay, not more. Not less. You want to pay the right amount. Okay, now one quick look at your payslip each month could save you a lot of hassle later. I don't want you to start getting those brown envelopes that could cause you to, you know, start stressing. Mistake number 4: thinking that your salary automatically makes you financially secure. No, you've worked incredibly hard, you've qualified, or you moved up in your career. You're earning more than you ever have. Surely Life should feel financially comfortable now. Right? Hopefully. But rent, council tax, professional subscriptions, GMC, medical defense, parking, fuel, food, student loan, pension tax, National Insurance. Before long, your bank account doesn't look as healthy as you imagined. So many people think financial well-being starts with earning more. Yes, earning a good income is part of it, but that's just the beginning. That's just the foundation. You need to understand where your income is going and where you may be incurring losses, leaks, and creating financial risk and mistakes without realizing it. And there's a simple way to check this quickly. You don't have to just sort of guess and be in the dark. We've made a tool for it. I created a tool, Moneywise Dr. Wari, a free tool called the MedScan Financial Wellbeing Score. So the MedScan helps you to check your overall financial wellbeing in just about 3 minutes. Think of it like your news score, like early warning score, but this time it's is your financial early warning score. So the MEDCAN, you can think of it as FUSE, or financial early warning score. It just helps you to spot where the problem is. Just as you wouldn't prescribe definitive treatment before a diagnosis, don't rush to make financial decisions before understanding your true picture. So there's M, is money in, money out. Where's the income coming from and where is it going? E, emergency fund. Have you built an emergency fund so that you're not suddenly in financial stress? If things don't go as planned. Emergency fund is basically like your financial cushion. D is obviously the debts. What debts do you have? Do you have high-interest debts that are crushing your financial goals, like 27% credit card debt? Would it be better to start paying that off first rather than talking about investing to get 8% return? S is strategic spending. Are you spending in a way that gives you the best enjoyment and fulfillment rather than just trying to B. Keep up with the Joneses. By the way, I met the Joneses, they were already bankrupt and had bad credit. So no need to keep up with the Joneses. Focus on what you enjoy doing with your money, not just to impress people who don't care about you. C. Compounding on investments. Are you investing sensibly and compounding without taking unnecessary risk? D. Allowances and taxes. Are you making sure that you're claiming all your tax-free allowance and avoiding leaking money through overpaying taxes? And finally, N, necessary protection. Are you protecting your income and the future of your loved ones? So you can actually scan all this within 3 minutes with MedScan. These questions matter more than simply just any more. They are really important. Now let's look at number 5 mistake. Mistake 5: Letting lifestyle creep quietly take over. This one catches out almost every doctor at the beginning, especially earlier in your career, and even later, some consultants and GPs when they finish their training. First, proper salary. Then you start thinking, I deserve a better car, a nicer house, fancier holidays, and a takeaway after every shift, and maybe the latest iPhone. Nothing wrong with that. And of course, you do deserve it. You've worked really hard to get here. And yes, life is too short, but There's nothing wrong with enjoying the rewards of hard work. I don't believe every coffee is a financial crime or that doctors should live a crappy life through their 20s and 30s just to retire early. That sounds really sad. You should still enjoy your life. But the key is conscious spending. You want to spend consciously, not automatically, not to impress people who don't even care about you. Lifestyle creep happens when every pay rise disappears straight into higher spending. Every single time your income rises, your expense somehow manages to catch up with it and even overtakes it. The problem is not enjoying your money. That's not the issue. The main issue is what I call insensible loss of money. Just like insensible loss of water or heat. You never notice where your money is going. It just seems to leak. It's a bit like this little piggy bank which looks all right from the front. Okay. But if you look behind, there's a little bit of a crack here. It looks completely normal from the front, but when you turn it around, you see that coins are going to leak out from here. There's a crack at the back. That's how lifestyle inflation creeps up on you. Everything looks fine, but it's quietly leaking. Nobody really checks the back. It's like sort of like bleeding through the backside, really. It could become anemic. Here's something that could help. It's one of the simplest habits I learned, and it helped me when I was a trainee. Whenever your income increases, just delay spending for at least 12 months. Just stay at your current lifestyle. I'm not saying never spend more, never change your lifestyle. I'm just saying take a break from increasing your expenses for 12 months. What then happens is that this can automatically help you increase your savings and investing before you increase your spending, because that extra can give you some margin. Even an extra £100 a month can make a big difference and give you some margin. Now, time is your greatest advantage. It's not just about stock picking or timing the market. Yeah, I know we have the Investing Academy and all that, but don't waste the time. When I was a resident doctor, whenever my income increased, I delayed the spending extra. I just stayed at the same lifestyle for 12 months, and the extra went to savings. And after that, I could still increase my lifestyle. Imagine going from registrar to consultant or GP partner and being able to save an extra £20K in a year. That extra £20K, you can invest it, and that will give you a margin. That alone can make a big difference and give you a better or solid financial foundation to start from. Mistake number 6 is waiting too long to start investing. Okay, one of the biggest mistakes I hear from doctors, one of the biggest myths, is that I'll start investing when I earn more, or when I'm a consultant, or when I'm a GP, or once the student loan is paid off. Unfortunately, that often means starting very late or not starting at all. And I've seen this from teaching hundreds of doctors in my classes. I've had doctors in their 50s and 60s in my master classes only just beginning their investing journey. I mean, thousands anyway. And some of them say exactly the same thing. I wish I started 10 years ago or 20 years ago. But now let's not get things mixed up. For some doctors, investing shouldn't be the first thing you do. That's not where you start from. If you are dealing with expensive debt like high credit card interest, or you have no emergency savings, or you're struggling with essential bills, investing probably is not the first conversation. But once those foundations are built, it's time to let compound interest start working for you rather than against you. Now let me illustrate an example from my book. I gave an example of two doctors assuming a 7% average market return. It's purely illustrative. Nothing here is guaranteed and real returns can vary. Let's look at two doctors' investments. So we'll call the first one Jane L and the second one James Latte. Okay, Jane L and James Latte. So Jane L starts early, obviously investing at 30 years of age, £500 a month. So that's £6,000 a year, 500 times 12. She keeps that up for just 10 years and then stops adding anything new at 40 years of age. She stops. In total, she's put in £60,000 in a 10-year period, but she leaves it invested untouched until she turns 60. So it gives it another 20 years to compound tax-efficiently inside something like a stock and shares ISA or a pension. On the other hand, James Latte starts at 40 years of age. Not bad. So 10 years later than Jane, but 40 years of age. He invests the same £500 a month, but keeps going for 20 years instead of 10. So all the way to 60. So double the time what Jane did. So in total, he's put in £120,000, double what Jane put in. And let's say they had the same return. But here's the striking part. By 60, Jane's £60K has grown to £335K while James is now at £266K. Decent money, but Jane only put in half as much as James, but somehow ends up with £69,000 more. That's not luck. That's just time and mass. Jane's money simply had longer time to compound. And to be clear, I don't mean you should be chasing the next hot stock tip or trying to time the market. This is basically having a system in place. You want a system that is reasonably— doesn't mean you have to take unnecessary risk. In fact, at Moneywise, Dr. Wale have something called a mass Automated Monthly Allocated Savings System. How it works is that you decide your investment amount in advance, automate it to buy your chosen investment monthly, and then you get on with life while it compounds in the background. You can review that once a year. The best investment plan is not usually the most fantastic one. It's a simple one that you can stick to. Now, mistake number 7 to avoid is pulling out of the NHS pension without understanding it. And I've made videos about the NHS pension on this channel. Let's talk a little bit about the NHS pension. And some people will tell you it's amazing, others will tell you to opt out immediately. The truth is a little bit more nuanced, it's complicated than either headline. The NHS pension is a defined benefit pension, so it's designed to provide you an income for life in retirement rather than simply building a pot of money. So it comes with real value that many doctors don't fully appreciate other than the money, including ill health retirement benefits, uh, benefits for your family if something happens to you, and also the salary is inflation linked. So your NHS pension is inflation-linked. It's not perfect either. There are tax issues for some higher earners, and the rules have changed over the years. But definitely, you want to think carefully before you leave the NHS pension. Here's my simple take on it: don't opt out just because someone on social media told you to, and don't stay in because someone else just told you to. Read your total reward statement, actually understand what you're building and the value. Now, if If you still feel unsure of whether to opt out or not from the NHS pension, I've made a detailed video that has now been watched by thousands of doctors. It's titled 10 Things to Consider Before Opting Out of the NHS Pension. It will be somewhere in the description. Go check it out, totally for free. It's less than 20 minutes, but it will help you to clarify any confusion you have around the NHS pension. Now let's look at number 8. Mistake number 8 is protecting everything except your income. So what's your most valuable asset in life? You think it's your house or your iPhone or your car or your pension? For most doctors starting out, it's none of those. Your income, your ability to earn, is your most valuable asset. So over the next 20 to 30 years, that ability could generate millions of pounds. Do the maths. Now imagine if it disappeared tomorrow through illness or injury. NHS sick pay is generous compared with many industries, but it has its limits. You could get full pay for 6 months at most and half pay for another 6 months. If you can't return to work, the income can reduce dramatically. So we insure our phones, our cars, and our homes. Many doctors never insure the one thing that pays for all of them— their income. On one of my podcasts here on this channel, I remember Dr. Ruth Mashin, a senior NHS consultant, who shared how her income protection insurance saved the day when she became unwell and could no longer work in her role. As a consultant radiologist. Now, the type of protection, financial protection you need depends entirely on your circumstances. And that's not something this video will answer. I've made other videos on that. But the earlier you arrange it, the more options you have. Whether it's income protection, life insurance, or critical illness protection. Check it out. If you head over to moneywise.com, you can find a qualified, vetted independent advisor to speak to about your financial protection. So there you have it. These are 8 mistakes to watch out for. There are many more, but these are the top 8 that we see people make. Understand your payslip. Claim your professional expenses. Check your tax code. Know where your money is actually going. 5. Avoid unconscious lifestyle creep. 6. Start investing early and consistently as long as you build the base. 7. Understand your NHS pension properly. And 8. Protect your ability to earn. Financial protections. None of this is really just about earning more money. They're about financial clarity, confidence, and taking control of your financial future. Most doctors don't have an income problem. They have a clarity problem. When you understand your finances better, you make better decisions. And over a career, those small decisions compound into extraordinary differences that give you more control over your future. Future. Now, with mistake number 2, you just heard about claiming your professional expenses, and it could be worth thousands, and what you could lose if you don't claim it. Some— for some people, it could fall into several thousands of pounds over the years. So I've created something to help you. If you are wondering how to start to claim your professional expenses, don't worry, I've put something together that would help. If you check the link in the description or the comments, you will get the exact step-by-step guide that has already been used by thousands of doctors I created it and it can help you claim your professional expenses. It's a simple guide that walks you through the whole process and it's completely free. Just click the link in the description, go download it and use it to claim your tax relief on your professional expenses. You're entitled to it. It also includes a video walkthrough that will guide you. And finally, if you want a clearer picture of everything, you want a clearer picture of your finances just beyond taxes, you want to get a holistic understanding, check your MedScan Financial Wellbeing Score. It takes just about 3 minutes. If you head over to moneywisedoctor.com/medscan, you can do a doctor's financial health check. It's completely free. It takes about 3 minutes and it will walk you through your finances and help you to understand where you should focus next. Now, if this video was useful, the best thing you can do with it is to send it to a colleague who is starting somewhere new this week. Help them get that extra clarity and that extra confidence. That's genuinely the whole point— helping a doctor avoid these mistakes before they happen, not cleaning them up after. Prevention is always better than cure. Now, if you're new here, just go ahead and hit the subscribe button. Every week I share practical financial education built specifically for doctors around taxes, investing, pensions, financial protection, and the decisions medical school never taught us how to take. Congratulations on your new role. I wish you every success in your medical career. You deserve it. And just as importantly, success in your financial journey. If you're wondering what to watch next, click the video on the screen now. 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