You're earning well, the practice is busy and the assets are stacking up. So why can't you answer the one question that matters: what would you keep if you stopped working tomorrow?
Felix Taing and Abraham Aguilan work through the late career reality for practice owners. Succession that starts a decade early, partnership agreements that survive a partner leaving, and the liquidity trap that leaves doctors asset rich and cash poor.
Plus the line Abraham uses with every client: you can't sell the oven to pay for tomorrow's breakfast.
Ask The Question A Decade Early: What would you keep if you stopped working tomorrow? Most practice owners meet that question in their sixties, by which point the answer is largely already decided. Asked at peak earning, it is still a question you can change the answer to.Succession Is A Today Task: Winding back cannot begin when you are ready to leave. Culture, knowledge and the right partners take years to hand over, so the work starts while you are still building.Settle How Partners Get Paid On Day One: Governance is the piece most partnerships defer, and the piece that decides how badly things go if a partner leaves, stops working, or dies. Planning for that event early is what stops it forcing a sale.Asset Rich And Cash Poor Is The Default, Not A Mistake: Three investment properties, a family home paid off and a growing super balance can still leave almost nothing you could actually spend next month. It is the predictable result of two decades of sensible decisions made one at a time, with nobody asking what the portfolio is meant to produce when you stop.Count Every Income Source, Not Just Property: The business and what it is worth, super and an SMSF, a family trust, a bucket company, commercial property, and the practice premises itself. Each one needs its own liquidity, and a property portfolio on its own is not an income plan.Your Experts Have To Talk To Each Other: A broker approving what a planner never modelled is how a family ends up selling an asset at the wrong time. Specialisation matters, and alignment across the team matters more."You can't sell the oven to pay for tomorrow's breakfast." — Abraham Aguilan"How much would you like to retire on? I have no clue. No clue." — Abraham Aguilan"So feeling great, but that's all you've got. There's no liquid assets, no shares, maybe a little bit of savings in the offset account." — Abraham Aguilan"We've seen business divorces and we've seen them where they go well and when they don't." — Abraham Aguilan"I do find in a physician's career line they don't start planning early enough." — Felix Taing"And if it's at that stage where it's still heavily negative geared, hey, we need to rethink that strategy." — Felix Taing
