The Hidden ROI of Financial Planning: Creating Career Optionality for Physicians

Suppose you were offered the following two work opportunities. Which would you choose?

Job A – An acceptable opportunity that pays slightly more than your current job; you’re guaranteed never to make less than you do today.

Job B – A dream opportunity that sings to your soul but comes with no guarantees. While you may make much more than you do today, you could also potentially take a six-figure pay cut.

In other words – do you maximize the upside? Or do you minimize the downside?

In medicine, we are trained to minimize the downside to our patients. First do no harm. The potential benefits of a treatment must outweigh the risks, and even then, we will only start it after shared decision making with the patient. And that is the way things should be.

We often extend the same logic into our career choices: First do no harm once more. Most physicians I know will choose Job A – we have mortgages to pay, loans to pay off, or families to feed. These are non-negotiables, and we cannot put our families in a worse bind in pursuit of a dream that is not guaranteed.

But what if we imagined a situation where the worst-case scenario was acceptable? Suppose your finances were set up such that you could absorb that six-figure pay cut without causing short-term or long-term harm to your family’s wellness. Would you still choose Job A?

There are many ways that a solid financial plan could help make Job B’s potential downside more acceptable:

• Proactive tax planning to ensure you optimize your after-tax income
• Creating a reserve fund to ride out any income gaps
• A long-term investment plan whose goals won’t be derailed by short-term drops in income
• A debt payoff/forgiveness plan that can survive a worst-case scenario
• Optimal contract negotiation to optimize revenue and minimize short-term financial risk

DocEmpowered exists because I personally chose Job B after doing everything on that list. I get that Job B is not for everyone, and even many physicians with strong finances will still choose Job A. That’s totally fine.

But my goal as a financial planner is to ensure that choice is 100% yours – you should be in a position where Job B is a reasonable bet regardless of what you ultimately decide. Imagine if every physician were in that position – how much more empowered would we be as a community?

Where do you fall? Are you the First do No Harm physician who wants the power to take smart risks when necessary? Or are you the physician already dreaming of something better and wanting to build the financial foundation to do so? Either way, I would love to help you create a sustainable financial plan to achieve your goals. Get started here.

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