What are some of the practical things you wish you knew earlier about financial wellness and retirement? Fellow physicians, Dr. Adam Kassam, Dr. Audrey Karlinsky, and Dr. Paul Healey, draw on their personal experiences to share what they’ve learned and how others can get on the path to retirement success.
What are some of the practical things you wish you knew earlier about financial wellness and retirement? Fellow physicians, Dr. Adam Kassam, Dr. Audrey Karlinsky, and Dr. Paul Healey, draw on their personal experiences to share what they’ve learned and how others can get on the path to retirement success.
Dr. Karlinsky: Retirement for me is, in my sarcastic way, not outliving my money at a minimum because I don't want to be a burden to others. Then, at the maximum it means being able to choose, choose when is a good time to work less or retire it in full.
Speaker 1: Welcome to the financial checkup, a podcast series devoted to improving the financial health and retirement readiness of physicians and their spouses. This series is brought to you by the award-winning Advantages Retirement Plan from OMA Insurance. This episode features audio from an Advantages Retirement Plan webinar recorded in October 2020.
Preya Singh-Cushnie: I'm Preya Singh-Cushnie, director at OMA insurance. I'll be your host and moderator for today's webinar, and we'll be discussing the importance of saving early for your retirement. I'm honored to be joined by our OMA President Elect, Dr. Kassam, Advantages Retirement Plan Investment committee members, Dr. Karlinsky and Dr. Healey.
The content of today's presentation is really meant for educational purposes only. It's not meant to replace any professional investment advice in terms of taxation, accounting, or financial, in any way. The conversation that we're going to have tonight really is just focused on the experiences of our panel members.
I'm pleased to announce that we entered in the World Pension Summit for plan design and innovation. Our competition was Lithuania, the Netherlands, Australia, and the Advantages Retirement Plan ended up winning against that competition. We are extremely excited as the plan is only 10 months old, and with that excitement, I'm actually going to turn over to our panelists who are with us today and ask them to each take about three minutes to introduce themselves to everyone listening. I will begin with asking Dr. Kassam, if he can go ahead and introduce himself and share a little bit more about his role and his experience with the OMA.
Dr. Kassam: Thank you so much, Priya, and thank you so much to everyone for being here. As Priya was mentioning, I'm Adam and I am the President Elect of the OMA. I am a practicing community Physiatrist, here in Toronto and small tidbit, I'm married to a family doctor. So, we have an interesting background as far as planning for our futures. I'm really looking forward to actually learning a lot from Dr. Karlinsky and Dr. Healy, today as well, so thank you.
Preya Singh-Cushnie: Thank you so much, Dr. Kassam and Dr. Karlinsky?
Dr. Karlinsky: Yes. It's great that all of you have turned out tonight. I look forward to a good conversation and some learning and sharing with all of you.
By way of background, I'm a family physician here in Toronto, downtown. I am closer to retirement than I want to admit. My own investment history, you will come to understand later, has not been optimal perhaps, but definitely good, because we didn't have some of these same opportunities that members such as you, hopefully will have now going forward.
The other thing I'd like to mention is that I serve on the Board of Directors representing District 11. I'm also the Vice Chair of the Finance and Audit Committee of the Board, and I have the privilege, for the last year and a bit, to serve on this investment committee that's brought to you this innovative program that we call Advantages Retirement Plan. Thank you.
Preya Singh-Cushnie: Thank you so much, Dr. Karlinsky. Dr. Healy?
Dr. Healey: So my name's Paul Healy. I'm an emergency physician. I run the Physician Financial Independence online discussion group with my wife, Dr. Jane Healy. It's a big group of Canadian physicians who talk about everything personal finance related. The group has become quite large over the last three years. It has about 22,000 members who are physicians and their spouses. I also sit on the OMA Advantages Committee that helped to create the Advantages Plan.
Preya Singh-Cushnie: Excellent. Thank you. I'm really interested in learning about what retirement savings means to each of you, and I want to start with Dr. Kassam. The second part of that question is, when did savings become a priority and how are you approaching it?
Dr. Kassam: Great questions, Priya. As an early career physician, much like many of perhaps the attendees on the call today, I consider retirement, hopefully a little bit down the line, but preparing for retirement comes now. I have the very good fortune of being married to a family physician who was in residency before I was and so we started having those conversation, I want to say, seven or eight years ago, in how do we consistently move forward with a plan in a trajectory that hopefully at the end of the day will allow us to live comfortably, whatever that means for every individual and every person and perhaps every family. What that means to us is hopefully having enough income that we're comfortable. I bring a lens from the physiatry world, which is very skewed by seeing a lot of patients who have had rehabilitation needs.
I see a lot of patients with catastrophic injuries. So for me and for Naila, my wife, we've really tried to index a little bit on having enough insurance should the need arise, that we would have any sort of major disability or critical illness now and into the future. Part of our retirement plan has been focused on that, and that's sort of a lens that we bring from our professional world, and then looking to chip away at retirement in conjunction with trying to pay down our loans, has been a balance that we're trying to achieve.
Preya Singh-Cushnie: Dr. Healey, I'd like to turn the question to you as well and ask you to tell us what retirement savings means to you?
Dr. Healey: What does retirement mean to me? Honestly, I don't think about retirement that much. I'll probably always want to work a little bit, but I think the way I look at it is that getting your sort of ducks in a row, and having your finances under control allows you the freedom to do things, to maybe work a little bit less, to have more control of your life. When you take care of this and get this under control, it gives you that freedom, so I don't so much think about Palm trees and retiring to Florida and not working anymore. I think more about how controlling my money gives me control over my everyday life.
Preya Singh-Cushnie: When did it become a priority for you to do that sort of control and planning?
Dr. Healey: As soon as I started working. As soon as you start to work and you have, luckily the nice income flows as physicians were able to have, I started looking at it and really wanting to know what I needed to do with my money to make sure that I didn't have to worry about things. For me, with money, it's not about the stuff it buys, it's about the security it provides. I like the idea that if I have money, if I have saved well, that whether it's situation that Adam talked about where I'm injured and I can't work, or maybe I just don't want to work anymore, I don't have to. So that's more what it means for me.
Preya Singh-Cushnie: And Dr. Karlinsky, could you share with us what retirement savings means to you and when it became a priority?
Dr. Karlinsky: Yeah, absolutely. So, I'm from that very lucky generation of physicians who didn't have the same kinds of student debt that you all have now. I was able to start saving a lot earlier because I didn't have that terrible burden of high debt repayment, but I could have done things a lot smarter and a lot better for sure, because I didn't have that kind of financial education that I wish I would've had, and that's no one's fault, but my own, perhaps. Back in the day, we would read David Chilton's the Wealthy Barber, and then look at whatever money we had left over at the end of the month, as opposed to an auto-escalation plan, like the ARP has, where it forces good behavior to keep saving and saving more.
Retirement for me is, in my sarcastic way, not outliving my money at a minimum because I don't want to be a burden to others. At the maximum, it means being able to choose, choose when is a good time to work less or retire it in full. Again, it's not about the stuff, it's about the experiences that I'll be able to afford, live comfortably, enjoy my life, grandchildren. I don't know if my background's up there, but I think on the last two meetings, I had my two grandsons, which are the complete reason why I want to save, and save well in this decade and the next.
Preya Singh-Cushnie: Excellent. So, you really draw upon a really interesting point of legacy as well. It's not just about today, it's about the future and the generations that come after you, so that's really interesting.
Dr. Kassam, just going back to your comments about early in practice, what would you say to younger physicians or those in medical school right now, where it might seem impossible to think about planning or savings, what would be your comments having been there?
Dr. Kassam: Yeah, it's another very good question. I don't know, I'm not sure if it's necessarily a right answer, but I think there's perhaps a right answer for individuals. Just to get by way of background, I'm the son of immigrants who came here with next to nothing and so savings, while never necessarily present in our household, was always thought about as being a very important thing to try and develop and to build. I think that ethos, or that sort of value systems has been of drilled into us by our parents from a very young age.
Trying to be at least mindful of where we are and where we're trying to go, and hopefully having a roadmap, and the ability to create a roadmap earlier on, as opposed to later, I think will allow you to develop strategies to put a little bit of money away consistently, and have that part of a habit forming process for individuals, would be very helpful. So, just having a roadmap, understanding where you want to get to, defining your goals and then doing those things consistently earlier, rather than later, would be sort of the things that I would think about.
Preya Singh-Cushnie: Just to follow up a little bit on that, we find that, when speaking with our students and residents, coming up with $10 a month or just $100 a month, which is the minimum to participate in this program, seems difficult. As a former med student, what would you tell those students when they think about that a hundred dollars?
Dr. Kassam: That's such a tough question because we all have trade offs and we've all been in school for a very long time and have accrued a lot of debt, and I'm still paying off my debt, which is quite significant. On the one hand, you'd say, "well, listen, this is for your future and you should be chipping away at it and be diligent," and on the other side is how much delayed gratification can one really expect to endure. So, I think there are tensions there that are reasonable and what I will say, is that I think that med students and physicians tend to, for the most part, think about their future. I think that they're forced to do that. We're forced to say, "okay, if I'm in med school now, what do the next 10 years look like?" Well, maybe that's in med school and residency and a fellowship, and then we do take a long vision or a long view of approach of things, so I would say using that to our advantage, especially as it pertains to a retirement strategy, I think would be helpful.
Preya Singh-Cushnie: Dr Karlinsky, what would be your comments when thinking about this demographic. If you were to think back at strategies to help with savings, what would be your advice, knowing the challenges that you've faced in terms of just debt and wealth accumulation?
Dr. Karlinsky: I fully understand what Dr Kassam is expressing that there's so many conflicting places where we can ask our younger members to put their financial resources towards, whether it's debt repayment, whether it's not delaying all gratification as they try to live through very difficult years of study and training. What I might say, if I were talking to my younger self, or even my daughter, who's a resident, is to whatever extent you're able, do consider to put it away. If it's not as much as you might need for a program such as this, it doesn't matter where you're parking it, in a TFSA in an RRSP. I find that money that I don't see is easier for me to save, than money that I do see in my account, that then I have to purposefully deposit. Anything that auto deposits, takes off the money from the top, might be a way to avoid the pain points of seeing yourself denied yet some other expenditures.
Preya Singh-Cushnie: That is a very interesting approach indeed, because when it's automatic, you almost don't have to think about it.
Dr. Healey, I know that you recently did speak to some of our medical students. Could you share with us some thoughts in terms of what your recommendation would be when it just seems difficult to even start to save?
Dr. Healey: The important thing that everyone here has to keep in mind is that the younger physicians and the physicians starting out now, are facing challenges that I didn't have and Dr Kandinsky didn't have. It's much worse. I hate to be sort of the grim Reaper and the bearer of bad news, but it is much harder for younger physicians right now. They're facing greater debt. They're facing a more difficult time getting jobs. Certainly, things like housing are very expensive.
It's a real challenge for them, but the message I want to give is that, you really have to get your house in order, because you're not going to be able to make the mistakes that I got to make. That's the sad reality of it. You really have to get your house in order and get your personal finances in order. Personal finance is often something that people allow to go to the bottom of the pile, where they never really get organized about what they're going to do, how they're going to save, how they're going to invest.
The thing for younger physicians that we have to talk about is that they have to manage their debt, and that is still a very important priority. Once you start getting your debt under manageable control, then you need to start thinking about investing and with investing, if you're not someone who's into this, if you're not someone who's interested in investing, and you want something simple, a program like Advantages is a very good choice, getting that set up, getting regular contributions rolling.
Even if debt repayment is your major goal, and that's a perfect goal to have, it's not a bad idea to get your account set up and get the money rolling. When you are starting to get money coming in, you're not going and trying to learn and set up accounts the last minute, or ending up in the office of a financial advisor, who's going to put you in something high fee because you're doing this last minute. It's a really good idea to try and think ahead. The bottom line is, the younger physicians, they really, really have to, because they're not going to get a chance to make mistakes that the older physicians have made.
Dr. Kassam: It might be valuable for our members to think about putting ourselves in other shoes that we see probably every day, which is our patients. So for example, after this, I'm actually going to go back to the hospital and round on some patients who I obviously take care of, and many of them are elderly and have care needs that are substantial, and so not wanting to not have enough resources where I'd be able to have someone, if that were the case, to care for me is a daily reminder of just how important it is to save and to have a goal in mind. For me, it's always trying to see and put myself in other people's shoes to motivate me to have that sort of forced behavior.
Dr. Healey: I think the thing is, that it's great to talk about the future and what are you going to do to get your retirement ready? Human beings, we all know this, are terrible long term thinkers. If you ask, "what are things going to be like five or 10 or 20 years from now," we just have no idea, and the truth is you don't really want to think about it. I try and frame it with people a little bit differently about how can you make your life better now?
If your finances were under reasonable control right now, if you had a spending problem and you dealt with it, or you put a savings plan in place that you knew that eventually would take care of your needs later on, how would that change your life, now? Could you reduce the hours that you work, would you be less burnt out, would you be less tired, could you spend more time with your kids and nurture those relationships? It doesn't have to be 30 years from now. You can find the motivation to how to make your life better next month. If I can drop that particular clinic that I hate, because I don't have to generate that extra income and have more time for myself, then that's something that you can do. I think people can change their lives right now. They don't have to wait 30 years. This is a thing, we talk about retirement, but we're also talking about this idea of financial independence, that you get everything set up and then you have the freedom to live your life the way you want to.
Preya Singh-Cushnie: In terms of just thinking about where you are today, and what you would tell your younger self about retirement, do you have any advice for your younger self, and maybe I'll start with Dr Karlinsky, in terms of retirement savings?
Dr. Karlinsky: As I alluded to earlier, my younger self, I would've told her this should be a high priority. Get on it, start sooner, max out whatever you can afford to save, because, as Dr Healy put it so well, it will take a lot of the anxieties that you have day to day about, do I have enough, will I have enough, who's going to pay off the debts, who's going to be able to carry me forward if I should not be able to keep working at this pace? So, my younger self was working more than six days a week, if I had had more secure savings, perhaps I would've gifted myself a day off earlier.
Preya Singh-Cushnie: Dr. Healey, what would you tell your younger self?
Dr. Healey: That you're doing okay. Just do what you're doing. I could maybe worry a little bit less about money. I think I was very focused on it when I was young. The nice thing about being older is I don't have to be as focused on it. So, maybe I could tell my younger self to take it a bit easy, but whatever.
Preya Singh-Cuhnie: No, that's great and Dr Kassam, you're not that old, but
Dr. Kassam: What I'll tell you is that it's great to soak in all this wisdom from Paul and Audrey. There was a slide that I'm not sure if you shared, but it was about, life happens. I'm looking at it right now. I jokingly texted my wife after sending her a photo of it and I said, "we can't get a divorce, it's worse than taxes." The only thing I would say in re reiterating the points was that, start as early as you can. I'm a big believer in trying to get off to a good start and so I think that being able to do that mindfully, in having again, a goal oriented task for that, is helpful.
Preya Singh-Cushnie: Excellent. I really wanted to just take the opportunity and express a huge thank you to all the panelists for joining us this evening. If you're interested in learning more about the Advantages Retirement Plan, you can reach out to us directly at info@omainsurance.com. One of our advisors will be able to reach out to you. We can book an appointment and guide you through enrollment to give you more information.
Thank you, Dr. Healy, Dr. Karlinsky, Dr. Kassam. It's been a pleasure and we look forward to speaking with everyone again, soon, stay safe.
Speaker 1: The financial checkup series is produced collaboration with OMA Insurance and Commonwealth, the administration and technology partner for the Advantages Retirement Plan.