The Advisor

Moneyrise™ by Hab Baker, President, Agency of America, Inc.
Planning, For A Better Life™

The Grapes of Roth

To Roth or not to Roth? That is the question for Physicians around the country. With a Roth IRA, input is taxed, but withdrawals are not, so you get juicy compound growth free of income tax (but IRAs are included in your gross estate for estate tax purposes!). Roth lets you time the Required Minimum Distributions (RMDs), but you must follow the rules. NO RMDs are required in your life, but must begin at your death, unless your spouse is treated as owner. (Say…, this is getting complicated).

If your spouse is the sole Roth beneficiary, and chooses to be treated as “owner”, then RMDs can be postponed until spouse's death, for your children (again, estate taxes are a separate issue). If your spouse and children are beneficiaries, then RMDs are stretched over the spouse’s life, maybe hitting ZERO at spouse’s death. There goes your plan to leave some for your kids! Bummer. Some folks name a trust as beneficiary. If you do, then your spouse can’t treat the IRA as his or her own, and cannot delay the RMDs until his or her death, even if your spouse is the sole beneficiary of the trust. Another bummer.

If someone other than your spouse is the beneficiary, such as your child, then RMDs must be made over the life expectancy of the beneficiary, using the oldest, if there be more than one. Now you are thinking, “This is really getting complicated!” But wait, there’s more: if any non-person, such as a charity or church, is included as a beneficiary, then the IRS treats your Roth as having NO beneficiary, and, RMDs must be completed in only 5 years. Holy cow! It’s enough to make a Physician need a Doctor.  READ MORE

Facts About Life 2011
Facts from LIMRA
Life Insurance Awareness Month, September 2011

•    The proportion of U.S. adults with life insurance protection has declined to an all-time low as 41 percent (95 million) of U.S. adults have no life insurance at all.
•    Both men and women are less likely to own life insurance today than they were in 2004—only 61 percent of men and 57 percent of women have some sort of life insurance coverage.
•    Only 1 in 10 insured adults own both permanent and term life insurance —half as many in 2004.
•    The likelihood of being without life insurance has dramatically increased for every age group since 2004.

Troubling Declines for Men:

•    Men ages 35 to 54 have seen large declines in individual life ownership in the past 12 years. This is troubling, since middle-aged men typically have families and are usually in their highest income earning years.
•    Young males, ages 18 to 24, are less likely than in past decades to be starting their adult years with any individual life insurance. Only 13 percent had individual life policies in 2010, compared with 30 percent in 1998.
•    Husbands ages 35 to 54 and 65 or older had double-digit declines in the proportion owning individual life insurance in the past six years.
•    Since 2004 the likelihood of husbands having any life insurance has declined across every income level —low, middle and affluent.

Women Lag Behind in Life Insurance Coverage:

•    While younger women are now as likely as their male counterparts to have coverage, women ages 55 and older are still considerably less likely than men the same age to own life insurance.
•    Women of all ages average smaller amounts of individual life coverage than men of similar ages. On average, women have $129,800 of individual life insurance, while men have $187,100 of individual life insurance coverage.
•    The gap in average life insurance coverage between husbands and wives with similar personal incomes has narrowed over the past six years —primarily because insured wives have experienced smaller declines in amounts of individual life and group life coverage than have husbands with similar personal incomes.
•    Women with high personal incomes ($100,000+) are less likely to have individual life insurance or group life insurance than men with similar personal incomes.  READ MORE

By Brendan Bracken, W.J. Bradley Mortgage
View My MD Preferred Profile

Given current economic pressures, many people are trying to erase debt from their financial picture and focus on saving and safer investments. Americans are paying down their credit cards and cautiously borrowing money. Not surprisingly, paying down the home mortgage has become an attractive option for people in a financial position to do so.

However, paying off your mortgage isn't necessarily something you always want to do. It turns out there are various considerations you should weigh to decide whether paying off your mortgage is the right move. Let's take a look at some of the factors that could influence your decision:  READ MORE

ByChristopher Veenstra, GFDIC
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Perhaps you have watched the TV show "Deal or No Deal." If so, you know contestants have a 1 in 26 chance of winning $1,000,000, which can improve every time they open a case that does not contain the $1,000,000. Open enough cases, and with enough luck, the odds can improve to 1 in 10, 1 in 5, or even better. The psychologically interesting thing about the show is that there is a "banker" who offers to buy the contestant's briefcase for increasing amounts of money as the odds of that case containing $1,000,000 improves.

Contestants agonize over turning down a guaranteed offer of; say $450,000, for a 1 in 3 chance of winning $1,000,000. Of course, the suspense is heightened by frequent commercial breaks and carry-overs to the next show to find out if the person wins.

Have you ever thought about what you would do if given the choice outlined above?  READ MORE

Boost Your Savings Account
...Without Even Trying
By Anthony Rosamilia, Capital One Bank
View My MD Preferred Profile

Annual income aside, there's not a person among us who wouldn't welcome the idea of having more money in their savings account. This is the money we use on everything from yearly vacations to family presents. Come holiday time, wouldn't it be nice to have an extra thousand or so dollars at your disposal? Here are a few ideas that can help to make that possible. The best part is you'll hardly feel it!

Bring Your Lunch to Work - The average person spends $6 when they buy their lunch yet only $2 when they pack it themselves. That's a potential savings of $20 a week or $1,040 dollars a year.

Durable over Disposable - Using products like Handi-Wipes (semi-disposable rags) as opposed to paper towels, and a rechargeable razor rather than the disposable kind, can save you up to $200 per year.

Hold an Annual Yard Sale - You should have no problem making at least a hundred bucks. Besides, you'll get rid of all that household clutter in the process. Whatever you don't sell can be donated to charity and used as a tax write-off.

Ask for Discounts - From buying airline tickets to paying a medical bill, always ask if there's a discount to be had. The worst that can happen is you'll be told no.  READ MORE

Do you know how to benefit from the Rule of 72 in your financial estimations?

The easiest way to explain this Rule, is by example.  When you take the inflation rate, suppose it is 3%, divide that into 72, and we get 24.  What this means is that at an inflation rate of only 3%, you will need twice as much money in 24 years as you do today.  Knowing this will enable you to plan for your future.  If you are living a $100,000 lifestyle, in 24 years you will need $200,000 to live the same lifestyle.

If you are earning 5% on your investments, divide 5% in 72 and you get 14.4.  What this means is that your investments, growing at 5% per year, will double in 14.4 years.

Article submitted by Sara Finkelstein, Signature Advisory Group, Delray Beach. Sara is a CFP candidate and has been serving clients in FL since 1996.  She is a Safe Money Strategist.  Have a question for Sara? You can email her at sara@signatureadvisorygroup.com or call (561) 503-4803.  READ MORE

$63.2 billion a year if a report from the journal "Sleep" is to be believed.  The survey drew from 7,428 health plan covered employees.  It found that 23% suffered from insomnia, which results in a "loss of 11.3 days annually, or $2,280 on average per worker".

The finding (if you can truly call it one) was that employees are not skipping out on work due to lack of sleep but are instead accomplishing far less at their job.  This is nothing shocking but I was more surprised by the statistical numbers than the rest of the article. 

I personally have a very hard time falling asleep even when I'm dead on my feet and I would say I half suffer from insomnia on a regular basis.  I guess I'm not alone in that since approximately 70 million Americans are the same way.

I'm left wondering what this stat would have been 20 years ago...50 years ago?  100 years ago?  Is our lack of stress far worse NOW because of the world we live in?  Leave your thoughts below.

Have a great Labor Day weekend!

Original Article
http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2011/09/sleepless_nights_cost_us_632b.html  READ MORE

Most in-house medical recruiters do a fine job of identifying and attracting qualified physician candidates.  But the task is getting more challenging as the national physician shortage grows, especially in the primary care fields.  Major national search firms will tell you that graduating residents and fellows will interview at five properties on average before accepting their first practice opportunity.

And with the challenging economic and real estate environments, many practicing physicians have postponed any plans to explore new opportunities; which in turn drives the competition for young physicians to new heights.  One doesn’t need to be a math wiz to understand that if graduating residents and fellows are accepting one out of five job offers for which they have interviewed there are four groups that lost their candidate.

If it were simply a numbers game of supply and demand, a medical recruiter might be forgiven for simply adjusting their recruiting budget and forecast in accordance with the new industry realities.  But a growing number of hospitals and medical practices are changing the numbers by changing the interview schedule once a candidate is on site.  

A recruiter can draw upon many resources to tell the clinical story of their practice opportunity.  They can assign a senior partner or department head to spend time with the candidate.  Hospital staff will see to it that the candidate is made aware of all the bells and whistles, the advanced medical equipment and facilities, the new doctor’s office tower and the preferred parking.  But the sad truth is that most of the practice opportunities offer state-of-the-art facilities, competitive compensation and benefit packages and impressive cadres of colleagues and support staff.  So why do 80% of the competing employers lose the contest?  READ MORE

Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke in a speech he gave to central bankers in Jackson Hole, Wyoming recently said the central bank "is prepared to employ its tools as appropriate to promote a stronger recovery."

There are two problems with this statement. First, it is largely the "tools" of the Federal Reserve that is contributing to the economic woes we face as a nation. And second, Mr. Bernanke's comment of a "stronger recovery" implies that a weak recovery is taking place. I am sorry. Ask American workers and small business owners if they think a recovery is under way. The people I talk to say no.
 
The "tool" the Fed Chairman is referring to is a third round of Quantitative Easing. "The Federal Reserve has a range of tools that could be used to provide additional monetary stimulus," Bernanke said. The first two stimulus plans where the government dumped trillions of dollars into the economy did not work. What makes him think doing it a third time will work?  READ MORE

Just a heads up to all our readers...we started a group on Linkedin!  Networking for Healthcare Professionals is all about our members and the healthcare industry coming together.  Share ideas, opinions and industry news.  Establish connections with other MDP members and share your knowledge with the healthcare field. 

The goal of this group is to establish business to physician relations as well as physician to physician networking. We also hope that this will become a resource for physicians and healthcare professionals looking for tools to help them grow in their career or career search and meet their everyday needs.

Have a great weekend (and to our east coast friends, stay safe)!  READ MORE