By Katherine Vessenes, JD, CFP®

What if there were just two things you could do to make your financial future brighter?

Katherine Vessenes, CEO and Founder of MD Financial Advisors sat down with one of our clients to ask just this. Dr. Chris Mozdzanowski has worked with MD Financial Advisors for over 12 years. He generously agreed to share his insights on money to help younger doctors feel more confident in their choices and avoid financial pitfalls. Read the transcript below.

The following transcript has been edited for clarity and grammar.

Katherine: What if there were just two things you could do to make your financial future brighter? Today we're doing a special segment that's called Quick Financial Tips from Your Colleagues, and I have a very very special guest here, Doctor Chris Mozdzanowski. Welcome, doctor.

Dr. Mozdzanowski: Thanks for having me. I’m happy to be here.

K: I'm so happy that you're here.

K: Welcome back to More Money Minutes for Doctors. I'm your host, Katherine Vessenes. I'm also the CEO and founder of MD Financial Advisors.

K: Tell us a little bit about yourself.

Dr. M: I did emergency medicine. I completed my emergency medicine residency in 2012 and then I stayed on and did a fellowship in undersea and hyperbaric medicine which also involves quite a bit of wound care. I finished that in 2013 and I've been practicing emergency medicine full-time and hyperbaric and wound care part-time since 2013, which is also the year that we started working together.

K: Yes, and I really have to compliment you on how far you've come. It's been a wonderful experience, we've been so blessed to work with you, and you've done such a good job.

K: Let's start with just a couple quick questions. Do you have two quick tips for younger doctors?

Dr. M: I think the first thing is to attempt as much as you can to live below your means. We're in school for a long time before we practice. There's a lot of delayed gratification. If you can just extend that out a little bit more, it just makes a world of difference.

Dr. M: The second would be to prioritize saving. Specifically saving like you contribute to your 401K or your health insurance, right out of your paycheck. If you can have that happen right from the beginning, it's a lot easier to ensure that that saving happens as opposed to waiting for the end of the month and sort of seeing what's left over.

K: I think that's so true. If you take it out first thing, it gets done. If you wait till the end of the month, there might be nothing left to save.

K: I want to mention one of the decisions you made early on that I was really proud of for you. Instead of making a large and flashy purchase when you finished your residency and fellowship, you and your family moved into your grandmother’s house. Do you want to tell us about that?

Dr. M: Yeah, I had taken a job in the vicinity of where I grew up in in New England, western Massachusetts. Part of that decision was because it was a new job and I wasn't quite sure how it would go or if I would want to stay there long term, so we rented a family house. My grandmother was planning to move in with my parents anyway. She was in her 90s. It made sense to rent and to figure out if we wanted to be back in the area, if we liked the job before we committed to buying a house.

K: I think that's awesome that even though you grew up there, and you thought you wanted to stay, renting was great. It was less expensive, so it let you get a good foundation those first couple of years. I thought that was some great decision making on your part.

K: All right, are there two things that you would suggest to other doctors that they could do to make their financial life easier, simpler, or less stressful?

Dr. M: Ultimately, it's to make a decision that X amount of money is going to go toward savings. If there's some sort of plan and some kind of projection, you have to start small and so again delaying gratification a little bit, making sure that you prioritize those things.

Dr. M: Then, try to resist the urge of impulse sprees. You know I'm married, I have 4 kids and we try to talk about this, even with the kids. They see something they want, they want to buy it right away, and I say, ‘Look, let's think about it for three days or think about it for five days or think about it for a week. If you still really want it after a week, then we can make a decision to buy it with money that you already have as opposed to making a purchase on money that you think you're going to have in a month.’ Earmark money for that $5,000 purchase. Save for it. Once you have the $5,000, go and make that purchase as opposed to being behind the 8-ball. I don't really have that money to pay for it now or when that credit card bill comes around and that's just the recipe for disaster.

K: Totally! I think you're really saying two or three different things here that I just want to comment on. I think when you have a plan, and to your point you have a savings plan, that in some sense it goes on autopilot and is just less stressful. You don’t have to keep thinking about it, because you know what you're doing, and you can put your brain power on to other things. I really like that.

K: I love the delayed gratification piece. I do that myself. I may see new clothes or something that I like, and I very often do not buy it. I'll wait a while and decide. Am I still thinking about that thing three or four days later? I would say 99% of the time I'm not. I'm really glad I didn't spend the money then and kind of wasted on something that really wasn't that big today. I think those things that you really want, they stick around, but most of those things fade away. And then, buying it with your own money as opposed to renting somebody else's money on a credit card. I think this is another really important piece to see your success, so that's correct.

K: All right now I have another question. Is there anything you wish you had done differently with your finances?

Dr. Moz: Hindsight is 20/20, so I suppose we'll see in 10 or 20 years, but nothing that comes to mind. I mean, looking back you can always say, ‘Well I wish I had saved more here’, or you think about compounding interest and had I saved a little more money earlier like I probably should have done in my undergrad years. Even things like Roth IRA's that I didn't do in my late teenage years.

K: A few $1,000 when you're 18 or 19 is a huge amount of money. I probably really didn't have it until 25. Unlike my own personal experiences where I've made tons of mistakes, which is part of what I like to bring to the table with clients, you don't make these mistakes. I honestly can't think of any mistakes that you've made, and it's very rare for me to say that about a client. Once again, kudos to you. I think you're doing such a great job. Thanks again for joining us today and sharing your time and your advice for other doctors and us

K: To our listeners today, if you found this helpful, please pass it on to some colleagues. Hopefully you can save them a lot of financial pain and I'm more than happy to take your questions and topics for future issues of our podcast. If you do have questions, you can reach out to us at info@mdfinancialadvisors.com and remember, only you can take care of yourself, so plan, protect, and prosper.

Listen on Apple Podcast, Amazon Music, or Spotify.

1-888-256-6855

Remember that you can send us any questions at: Info@MDFinancialAdvisors.com

Katherine Vessenes, JD, CFP®, is the founder and CEO of MD Financial Advisors who serve 600 doctors from Hawaii to New York. An experienced Financial Advisor, Attorney, Certified Financial Planner®, author and speaker, she is devoted to bringing ethical advice to physicians and dentists. She can be reached at Katherine@mdfinancialadvisors.com.

This presentation is not an offer or a solicitation to buy or sell securities. The information contained in this presentation has been compiled from third-party sources and is believed to be reliable; however, its accuracy is not guaranteed and should not be relied upon in any way whatsoever. This presentation may not be construed as investment, tax or legal advice and does not give investment recommendations. Any opinion included in this report constitutes our judgment as of the date of this report and is subject to change without notice.

Additional information, including management fees and expenses, is provided on our Form ADV Part 2 available upon request or at the SEC’s Investment Adviser Public Disclosure website, here. Past performance is not a guarantee of future results.