The Gold, the Bonds, and the Pretty

Posted Tuesday, August 5, 2008 to INDUSTRY > Medical Devices

Posted by mmoore

Cosmetic surgeons may be great at helping people look good, but many of them have an investment picture that just plain looks terrible. Creating a physician financial management plan is a lot easier said than done. It turns out that many of the world's best doctors are also some of the world's worst managers of their own wealth. Great money management takes more than just being a smart person - you have to learn the ropes of investing in order to make smart decisions.

 Here are just a few of the thousands of options a physician has to choose from for their doctor retirement planning.

• Bonds: Many different types of bonds are available, each with different objectives and risk profiles. Often, individual investors choose to invest in bond funds, and many physicians and other investors keep bonds as a percentage of their total portfolio for a safe and steady relatively low-yield investment to balance out other higher-risk investments.
• Stocks and Mutual Funds: By now, you should at least have some familiarity with the key concepts here. You can select individual stocks to make a part of your portfolio, or you can leave the stock-picking to the pros and invest in mutual funds, which contain a mix of companies in a certain industry or growth profile. Including domestic and international stocks, mutual funds, and similar instruments, there are literally tens of thousands of options.
• Venture Capital: This is an area that traditionally has not been accessible to individual investors, but that's changing fast. Physicians can now pool their money and invest in emerging healthcare technologies, getting in on the ground floor of what could be the next generation of medicine. As the old saying goes, "invest in what you know." And that advice is just as relevant today as it ever was.

I'm not giving investment advice and I certainly haven't listed all the possible ways a doctor could smartly invest her hard-earned dollars. I encourage all physicians, young and old to talk with a financial counselor or retirement planner in more detail to create a sensible portfolio that will meet their short and long-term objectives. Becoming a financial management physician expert takes a great deal of time and a great many wise decisions. You spend so much time caring for the health of your patients, why not take the time to ensure the health of your finances?

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