Interview with Ryan Inman, President and Financial Planner at Physician Wealth Services [Show Summary]

How are you going to pay for medical school? How are you going to pay off your med school debt after you start practicing? How will you be able to afford a home and some of the comforts you’ve worked so hard for? Those are the questions we’re going to discuss today with an expert in financial planning who focuses strictly on residents and physicians.

Financial Planning for Doctors [Show Notes]

Ryan Inman is the President and Financial Planner at Physician Wealth Services, which he runs from Las Vegas, NV. He is also the host of the Financial Residency Podcast. Both are aimed at medical students, residents, and physicians in their first 10 years of practice. In addition to a Bachelors in Accounting, Ryan has an MBA and a Masters in Accounting and Financial Management, Personal Finance, all from the University of San Diego.

Ryan, can you tell us a little about your background and how you began your career in financial planning and advising? [2:00]

I got my first glimpse at investment advising from my neighbor. I was the nerdy kid who saved all his money and asked his mom to open up a TD Ameritrade account so I could trade stocks. My neighbor was a certified financial planner, working with high net worth individuals of $1M+, and “working” with him I knew what I wanted to do. When I got out of college in 2008 the entire financial industry was decimated so I ended up starting with KPMG in public accounting. Ultimately I went to work with my neighbor doing financial planning.

I started dating my wife as a freshman in college. We got married 10 years later, and we’ve been married for five, which is how I got into advising physicians, as she is one. I saw all the stuff my wife and her colleagues were pitched – terrible investment products, using fear and scare tactics to sell them - so I helped them out. As my wife and I started talking about our future – whether we wanted kids, our career paths – I realized I really wanted to work with physicians. All of our friends are doctors or financial planners and it’s what I really love doing so I’m very happy to be talking on the show to premeds to arm them with knowledge before they get to med school to avoid mistakes on the back end.

Why have you focused on guiding medical students and doctors early in their careers? Why do they need different advice than a young lawyer or young engineer, for example? [5:21]

One is I’ve been there. I have intimate knowledge of the pain, struggles, and yes, of course joys of a career in medicine. I know what it’s like to be buried in student debt, with your spouse making next to nothing, sleeping every fourth night in the hospital. This is a main driver of why I only work with physicians.

In terms of how they are different, a few things stand out. One, they have delayed gratification. They put so much aside to become a doctor – not just financially, but free time, social time - and are earning pennies per hour in their residency, essentially. They take their work home and chart and that time is not reimbursed, for example. I have clients who have put off starting a family due to student debt. My average client has $283K of debt, and there is a reason why they are overwhelmed with what to do. They are never trained in finance but are then expected to run their own practices. The biggest thing after all of this delayed gratification is they experience this insane lifestyle inflation. An attending salary may be $340K after making about $55K as a resident.