Financial Planning for Doctors (in collaboration with Wesleyan)
Summary
.
Learning objectives
.
Related content
Similar communities
Similar events and on demand videos
Computer generated transcript
Warning!
The following transcript was generated automatically from the content and has not been checked or corrected manually.
Yeah, yeah, got it. So, uh OK, got it. We'll start then. So, thanks for inviting me. Um Thanks to all the, the guys in the team who can't be here but have invited me to come along. Um So the idea about is, is it started on a Yes, sure. Thank you. Um Yeah, the idea is to talk about, are you financially fit? So, rhetorical question. Um But we'll talk to you through the slides, talk about how Wesley might be able to help you with your future plan. Um Get better understanding for what we do, how we do it, throw up some ideas. Um Yeah, I think it's an auto, auto pilot. So it's moving through at a pace. Um But the idea of today is we'll do this presentation. Um But at the end, we'll do a Q and A and hopefully that will be the point at which you may have some questions relevant to your own situation and that, you know, you might get some value from asking me at the end, but we can do questions as we go, but we'll do a Q and A session right at the end to maybe save any burning questions to the end. And I've got some contact, sort of question cards, want to fill in your details and speak to me offline, book a meeting. Um How we work is we do 1 to 1 meetings mostly over Microsoft teams. Um So what I'll do is I'll carry on the presentation and then we'll, we'll put up the Q and A s at the end. So, just talking about Wesleyan, we're a mutual society. Um So we've got no shareholders. We've been around it actually 100 and 82 years. The society has been around 18 41. Um We have an advisory board, so we've got a team of medics and we've got junior advisory board as well. So junior doctors and senior consultants and dentists and senior GPS who together we'll advise Wesleyan on the things that are relevant for medical workers, um, as appropriate. Um Just gonna go back to that screen. Um I'm a specialist financial advisor, Mark Menon. I've worked with Wesley for 10 years. I'm an employed member of staff. Um So I've actually been doing this job for over 20 years as a financial advisor. I can tell you all about that at another time as appropriate. We've got the Wesley Foundation, they did some really great work during the pandemic. Um They put in over a million pounds to support the medical professions with just, you know, other things outside of just the work you're doing maybe mental health support initiatives to add value outside of work as well. So it's not just about us trying to make as much money from our clients as possible where we've got extra profits, we do things like today, give something back to the professional segments we look after. So I look after Kingston Hospital, um specialist advisor here at Wesley. And I say to one of your, I work from home, but I'm out and about seeing clients face to face, but mostly through the internet. Now we do the majority of our meetings and through Microsoft teams, which we find is quite an effective way to um talk about the financial planning issues. Um So I think that's what I wanted to say on that one. So yeah, we're going to look at the fitness and the sort of three parts of the presentation are starting with the Sound Foundation, looking at the place you call home for mortgage advice and mortgages and then building your future and then we talk about next steps. So as I see it with financial fitness, this is a five step approach. So analyze your current situation, define your financial goals, consider your options and how to achieve your financial goals. Develop a plan, implement the plan and make sure you review it because you can have the best plan. But then if you just leave it in the drawer and you never review it or you never think about it and it can go, go, go off, off. Uh, the Cent track should have said it probably this presentation will be about 20 minutes, 15 to 20 minutes. Um, so I'm going to be fairly rapid with the slides, but then we can get to the question and answers and hopefully there's people online that got the questions. Is there a facility for them drop in? Yeah. So please feel free if you're online and you've got any questions, um we can pick them up at the end. So looking at starting with um a solid foundation Wesley as a society took over, what was the Medical Sickness Society? So that was back in 18 84 back in them days it was a group of doctors who protected each other if they're often sick. So that's where our heritage comes from. And the the division I work in stems from that those days of 18 84 when doctors were protecting each other. So the idea of income protection as it provides you with an income, if you're not able to work, you've got the sick pay available. I've actually put these two the other way round because you get your sick pay first and then if you're off longer than say six months or however long your sick pay lasts for, that's when your income protection would complement your sick pay. So that's really when I'm advising clients to look at their future plan to make sure that they've got their income covered for not just say up to six months or six months, full pay, six months, half pay like the NHS does um need to think about it for the long run and it helps you plug any gap. There might be if you're off longer term. So the next slide talks about some examples. These are actually real life examples where we've had one client going back to 99 he's been off for over 30 years and I I worked out really quick calculation. It's about 37,000 lbs a year. On average they've been receiving from for 30 years. So hopefully we're not gonna be off work for that long ourselves, but it can happen. Um And there's some other examples as to why it's a good idea to have your income covered. Yeah, it's uh so yeah, so that's the reason why it's important to look at your future plan. Think about if I'm off sick, have I got some rings? Will the bank of mum and dad bail me out actually? Do I want that to happen or would I rather do something for myself? So, yeah, we're looking at a plan at Wesley in, she's got guaranteed premiums. We will only cover doctors and dentists in our cover now. So it's exclusive to the medical profession. Um It's five star rated and its own occupation cover. So what that means is we're not going to expect you to go to work as a lorry driver or office worker. If you're unable to do your job as a medic, you'll be covered by way of and yeah, and we can review it with you. So we don't charge any additional fees to review the cover at regular intervals for those clients who have got the cover you. Some of you may have had the career protector coming from Wesley when you were a medical student or you may have seen Wesleyan sponsoring it maybe five or 10 years ago, depending on when you were in your f one year or before that at medical school. So what else are the things that you should be thinking about? I suppose looking at protection, I'd call it three pillars. You've got your income protection which provides you if you're sick. Yeah, obviously if you pass away, thinking about the situation, if you're single with no Children, you could argue from a financial point of view. There isn't a need. But if you've got family, you got dependence, then it is important to think about that. Um And with a serious ill for the longer term, we talked about the income protection, but there's also critical illness um cover which kind of, I call them two sides of the same coin. Really. So if you're off for longer term, your income protection plan can protect your income. But equally if you've got a sizeable mortgage or you wanted a one off lump sum. Then a critical illness plan is a sensible thing to consider. All right, moving on. So we'll talk about mortgages, the place you call home. So, actually, that's an interesting point. I don't think I've ever met somebody who actually wants a mortgage. They think they want a mortgage, but they don't actually want a home, nobody actually wants. Especially now with the six and 7% interest rates, most people would rather have the house without any debt or any mortgage. But it's a nece, you know, necessary part of the equation. So when, when I'm helping clients consider their mortgage needs, then we'll look at, you know what's important actually, first of all, you, you find the right property that suits you how much you can afford per month and then I can help clients like I'm gonna be doing later on today establish how much they can borrow. Um, things like decision in principle from nationwide or the other lenders on panel. Um And yeah, regarding the property as part of the fact finding process, I'll establish all of these issues about whether it's a joint property, joint mortgage. How long you want the loan for? Um, if it's any insurance needs, talk to you about what survey might be correct for your situation on the property you're buying, I talk to you through all the costs and expenses. If you've already got a mortgage, then you may want to look at trying to secure the best deal you can in the marketplace, especially for those that are coming to the end of a fixed rate that's well publicized at the moment. Um, I think I saw a client yesterday, they've got a 0.94 fixed rate, which is great, but that will expire at some point over the next couple of years. So then they're gonna be looking at between five and 6% interest rates potentially. So we can do the best to find the best deal. We can um look at the existing provider. I generally look at the existing provider first because that's the line of least resistance where you may find that if you're already with the bank or building society and they're offering a really good deal. It's a lot less paperwork and less sort of headache. Um but we will try and get you the best deal we can from outside of that existing provider as necessary. So, yeah, and I'll consider all the things that go into the mix as to the monthly cost and the overall cost of the mortgage. So yeah, that was just a quick session about mortgages. Um So next, we're gonna look on building the financial future um and trying to look at some of the nicer things in life, so building for the future. So when I'm hoping to fight for savings and investments, the idea is to understand what the objective is, how long you're investing it for making sure that you've got money for a rainy day. So we always recommend our clients keep back three times of their normal expenditure as a emergency fund. And that's a bare minimum where you should have more than that. If possible, you may be budgeting and trying to save for a new car, finance a new car. Obviously, we talked about mortgages. You need to build up a house deposit if you're a first time buyer, um, you may want to enjoy a holiday. Now, we can all go on a flight, maybe not such fun in Europe at the moment. But you know, um, when the weather's good, not too hot, then we can all go on a nice holiday. Um, and then thinking about planning for maybe school fees, children's education, all of these things may be more important to some people, more than others. So that's my job is to understand what the priorities are, what's important and then think about what happens if you don't plan. So, yeah, I guess you just carry on doing what you're doing. Don't have a plan you get towards maybe later in your life and you think? Oh, I wish I'd done something about this objective or this plan I wanted to, to achieve. So, um yeah, it's always a good idea to sit down, take stock, have a review of things. Um, and yeah, you haven't got the savings and investments behind you. There could be financial uncertainty. Um, So yeah, doing that financial planning will help you with that, making sure that you avoid any of those problems. So let me just look at when I'm sort of setting up an investment goal, what we'll look at is these sort of areas. So I would probably call it more how much money you're investing rather than using this graphic how long you want to invest it for what risk you're happy with. So, attitude to risk is really important and understanding about stock market risk, but also things like inflation risk provider risks. It's not just stock market risk. Um understand about the ways of maximizing the money from a tax efficiency point of view and then also not on this graphic but about what access you need. So you might have an investment fund but do you need a regular income from it? Do you want to be able to dip in and out of it? Is it for maybe if you've got Children? Is it for the children's future? Is it for your retirement? So what's the, what are you saving for? What you're investing for then I can help you get you the right plan for your future? What whatever that might be. So, looking at retirement, going to talk a bit about the NHS scheme. So huh and yeah, yeah, thinking about it. Yeah, I mean that's an interesting point. Co I've, as I mentioned to a couple of you, I've been working with was for more than 10 years. And going back to when I actually first started working for was the original pension scheme had a retirement age of 60. Then the 2008 section came in and that was gonna be age 65. The 2015 section is based on state retirement age. So these sort of planning, when is the right time to retire that all links into when the normal pension ages of the scheme. But I would look at it at my job is to try and help you to be able to retire earlier if that's what you want. So if you don't want to be working till you're 68 in the NHS, or having to work till you're 68 that's probably more important bit. Whereas you may, I've got clients who want to work past 70 but they've got a choice. They don't have to, they've got the money, they've had their pension since they were 60. They, they've done their retire and return or whatever it might be and they're, they're probably doing six or seven program activities or as a GP in the day, they might do two or three sessions as a GP, but they're choosing to do some work, but they don't financially have to. So that's the point we're trying to help our clients get to, um, at the moment with how things are changing with the pension. It, it could be more challenging because the normal pension age is 68. Um And this is the career average scheme um that I'm, I'm alluding to here. So this is the up to date scheme. So from the first of April last year, everybody who's in the scheme actively is in this scheme now. So there was that whole age discrimination issue where the older doctors didn't have to move pension scheme in 2015, but that's all been resolved now and I can pick up with people on a 1 to 1 basis if they want any help or guidance about their pension. Um But the idea is you'll pay a certain percentage of your wages into the pension and the NHS will guarantee to give you the, the formula is 1/54 of your earnings for that year. So whatever your earnings in that year is divided by 54 that's what you will get from the pension for that one year in isolation, but they'll also give you indexation percentage on top. So 1/54 you might think, oh, it's not much but you then say got 20 or 30 years ahead of you. You have 2030 years of inflation. It's actually inflation plus 1.5%. So quite a big booster to that pension annual allowance. This has been sort of covered and publicized in the press recently. Um going back to December time, there were a number of reforms to the NHS pension. Um the first of which was the removal of the lifetime allowance, the annual allowance, we've now got a threshold income, which means as long as you combined earnings from wages, salary out of hours work, locum, work, private work, any, all the work added together. If it's below 200,000, then you'll be below the threshold income. What that will mean is that you'll have a 60,000 um, annual allowance. So it's really only those who are at the highest end of the earning spectrum that might be affected by the tapering of the annual allowance. So that's good news for doctors because it was actually affecting anybody who's just reaching consultant level. And even those at the top end of the pre consultant grades, CST 67 grades could even be pushing towards the 40,000 limit in them days, but the the limits gone up to 60,000. So that's good news. Um But again, I can pick up with um anybody who wants some help on this on a 1 to 1 basis. Um I can also give advice about alternative ways of saving for retirement. So obviously investing money, we talked about that earlier. We can look at ways to boost the NHS pension. So I'm not sure whether we can talk about that in a minute. Whether you've heard about things like the NHS additional pension, there's early retirement reduction buyout option rolls off the tongue. Um You can put into personal pensions I SAS, there's loads of other things you can do. Um cash based savings, cash I SAS can invest in, in property. People are doing buy le as an alternative method of building up wealth for their retirement. So I can talk you through all of the aspects of those different options and methods of saving and investing for retirement. So I think I've done that fairly quickly. I'm not sure how we've done for time there. So the probably is about 15, 20 minutes. So, what I'll do is we'll look at opening it up in a moment just, uh, before I do that, uh, for those who want an appointment, you've got my card today, there's a, um, a form if you want to fill it in and I'll get my, um, colleague to book in, phone you up, book a time that suits you. Um, I can do meetings in the evenings. Um, so mo mostly during the week I'll do teams meetings up to about six or 7 p.m. Um, we don't charge you a fee so you got nothing to lose. If you want to sort of review your finances, you want to understand about how these things might impact you, how it sort of could benefit you to consider your options to give you a better understanding. Um, yeah, and that's really what I wanted to say during this presentation. So, kind of that. So I've gone through that quite quickly. So I don't know if there are any questions and any questions in the online as well, maybe we'll have a look to see. I'll take a drink of water while you're doing that. Ok. Yeah. Yeah, please. Yeah, and you can pop your details on there if you wanted to but if not just just email, email me then. Yeah, lovely. So the questions is just, yeah. Yeah, nothing so far. I know. Um just crashed. Yeah, I say on average, how much would someone pay? Yeah, I mean, it's, as far as the service goes just to sort of clarify and summarize, we don't charge any fees to do a meeting. So in terms of a minimum, there's no kind of minimum set amount you have to pay to Wesley in, um, what we would find is, let's say we do a review and you go right mark, I need to sort out my income protection. That's my biggest, the first thing we talked about on the presentation. So we quote you a figure. So it might be whatever X amount of money, a monthly cost. Um, that would be for that income protection policy. So it's calculated. Yeah, it's, it's based on a number of factors. One thing that was changed about 12, 15 years ago is, is now for men and women. It's the same, it used to be men, but it's slightly cheaper than women. They equalize that. It's just just how it was back in because you got, men are more likely to die earlier. Statistically, they die three years earlier than women. But statistically women have more illnesses than men from a group of say 25 years olds at 65. But that all got equalized. So the cost for a woman and man is exactly the same because our friends in Europe said you're not allowed to charge different costs to a man and woman, same car insurance. So women's car insurance has gone up because of better drivers than men usually. So it's kind of you win and lose. Um, yeah, it's based on your age. It's based on whether or not you smoke, um, which most of my clients don't smoke. Um, based on health factors. So if you're in good health, you get the standard cost. I would say I'll try to think of an example. Um, so when I've done a, a quote for a client who wants to insure something like 2000 lbs every month, up until 68 years old and it's linked in with the NHS sick pay scheme because you get full pay and half pay, it'd probably be about 50 lbs a month. That's just a very ballpark figure. What I would actually do is I'd get a spoke quote to give you an exact figure and it's, it might even be below that figure. It might be 40 something pounds. I have to give you an exact quote, but I, in a way that's the whole point of the service is we understand what you need and then show you what it costs you to protect what you need and then you can make an informed decision to go actually. Yeah, that's quite sensible because, you know, once I've had the six months full pay from the NHS six months half pay. How do I pay my rent? How do I pay my mortgage? How do I pay my gas and electric bills? How much they've gone up? So, so in terms, but in terms of your commitment, it's really up to you. So you don't have to take anything with Wesley in. There's no fee for a meeting, there's no expectation. You don't, you know, we do a meeting. I'm not gonna be offended if you say thanks, Mark, I'm not gonna take it forward. That's up to you. But my job is to sort of make it clear what I recommend why I recommend it to you and then it's your decision and your choice what to do. Um Other examples. Yeah, if we do things like life insurance and people have mortgages or if you want to protect their family again, the small 150,000, 200,000 of coverage over a 20 year period of time, I've seen the costs being be about 20 lbs a month might be 10 or 15 lbs a month, depends on the age of the individual. But again, we need to get exact dates of birth and all the, all the other information that make a big difference because, uh, as an example, we had a patient recently that was traveling. Uh, they didn't get travel insurance for 30 30 lbs, say, and they came here and they were charged India because they came from the States. So it might say, ok, like it's not a big cause, but if something happens, it likely that can be really um, help you a lot in situation. Yeah. No, absolutely. And, um, you know, I've got clients who go through, I meet them in their thirties and they go through till their 60. Obviously, I've not been around that long but, er, you know, probably getting on a bit, you know, I'll be 50 this year. So I've got another few more years ahead. Um, but as, as I'm working with my clients over the years, most of them will go through not need to claim on insurance. But then as you seen earlier, there are people who need to claim and some of it is more, you might be off work for eight months. So you need two months of top up coverage while you're off cos the NHS will pay you full pay for six months. But by not having the cover even two months of, you know, maybe one or 2000 lbs is quite a big chunk of money. Um, in terms of investments, we start off our investments you can actually start off with basically this is 50 lbs a month, regular saving 100 lbs a month, that type of level. So that's the minimum contributions we'd set up for a regular saving investment. But my job would be to look at the whole picture. So when I look at it, I'd say, ok, well, I've identified you might need some income protection. There might be a need for life cover and, or critical illness cover. You may want to review your pension and get a much better idea about what you're doing with your pension. And then you might say at the end of that, with all these great big pay rises you're getting from the NHS, I'm still joking but you know, um but you are getting a pay rise. So there might be a little bit of money left over to help you towards those goals and objectives. But also those, once they've got to consultant level, they may then also get the um sort of consultant income from private work. So all of those things can be part of the future um planning so I can help with pretty much all of that. Um But yeah, so answer the question, no minimum, no obligation, not expecting you to pay anything to Wesleyan, but we get paid by the products we recommend. So if I recommend the mortgage, the lender, whether it's Halifax or whether it's Barclays or whichever bank or building society, they pay Wesleyan a fee for once the mortgage goes live and that's how we make money. And if I recommend an investment, it's normally up to 3% of a regular payment or a lump sum payment, we take off as an initial advice fee. So if someone invests 10,000 lbs, um then you know, that would be 300 lbs initially advice cost. So it'd be 9700 invested in the policy I recommend. Um So yeah, that's probably what you will need to know a bit. Yeah, how, how we, how we charge what we do. But um yeah, so thank you. And is there any other questions uh in terms of financial, like as a general? Yes, personal. Um as a financial health team, what would you recommend in terms of saving the, let's say the raining day fund? Yeah, for example, there are some uh rules, you know, if you go to on youtube or yeah, they say for example, six month salary or what based your experience. I think it's practice. I would say we sort of alluded to in the presentation three months of it's probably actually three months of income is our minimum. I think I said net expenditure but probably three months of actual income is probably a more sensible minimum. And we also have set a minimum benchmark of 15,000 lbs as a cash limit. So, but that's the minimum. And then we also recommend you keep a cash reserve on top of that. So the emergency fund is three times your salary, let's say. So wherever your monthly take home is keep three months of that in cash and then up to another 10% or 4000 lbs buffer zone on top of that figure. So, you know, could be up to 20,000 lbs as cash really. Um but it depends on the attitude to risk. So somebody's averse to investing in the stock market for whatever reason, once we've gone through a full review and we understand that then there are still other cash based investments that can pay a bit more like one year, two year deposits. Um Cash I SAS as I mentioned, for higher rate taxpayers can be very effective. But equally in the long run, I've been helping clients invest money for more than 20 years and the stock market will normally outperform cash. And we've got modeling tools that can demonstrate what we think it will look like after five years, 10 years, 15 years and the effects of keeping the money um in cash. Um One of the documents I've brought with me has got um an inflation kind of yeah table which I'll share that at some, I've got a PDF version of this, but it's um showing the negative effects of inflation. So over the time since really the banking crisis, there's been a negative effect on um on cash. So yeah, definitely. So um we've got a wide range of investments that we can help you with. So stock market investment. But I think as I said, bit like the same from the earlier question and I'm looking at investments, I'm not just gonna pick out an investment, go, right. Have that one that's for you. It's more understand about your situation. Understand how long you want to invest for, understand about what, what your attitude to risk is, then also understand about what your objectives are and how you feel about it. That's OK. Yeah. OK. Ti so yeah, so any other questions from what I said, any other things about the pension or do you want me to talk a bit more about the pension or are you happy with what I covered um for the pension? Um Some people I I've heard people say um they choose to opt out from the NHS. Yeah, especially people that are, you know, would not stay long in the UK. Yeah, I say it's terrible like them because actually the NH suspension is quite, yeah, because it matches inflation. Yeah. Yeah. Um So yeah. Um have you like based on your experience, what have you seen like good example, bad examples. What you think I'd say? I've not seen too many bad examples simply because how those schemes work in the UK, you normally opted in anyway. So even if you don't want to be in the pension by default, you'll be in the scheme So you're gonna have to physically opt out of the scheme. Um, so it's, you have to take proactive action to opt out of the scheme. So I've not seen too many people do that. Yeah, I've seen it maybe when there was issues relating to the annual allowance. So a few slides back where I showed you about the 200,000 threshold income and 260,000 adjusted income when people were pushing above the limits, then some of them were choosing to opt out but not many. And also the government have recognized that and they've made a lot of changes. But for those with an overseas plan who maybe come to the UK for 2 to 5 years or whatever, I'd still recommend they join the pension because ultimately, there is an option where they can take that pension to their country where they're moving to in the future. So the NHS has got a website and it explains about your options. If you're gonna move overseas, you could take the pension with you overseas. You need to get specialist tax advice in the country you're going to. But so I would, if it was me and I was sort of coming from a foreign country to the UK and working in the NHS, I would definitely be in the pension 100% and then figure out my options if and when I'm going to leave the UK, offer any advice with regard to that. Um We'll advise you about the UK side of the equation. So we'll advise you about what you've done so far, what you built up, what your implications are. Yeah, we can give you the advice about what implications. There are things that is and pensions and life covers and all that sort of stuff. Um But what we can't do is we can't advise non UK residents. So once you've got on the plane and gone off whichever country it will be at that point, you need to get advice in the country you're moving to. Um But then as and when, if you do come back to the UK, we'll pick up again. But I guess the advice will be while you're here in the UK. Definitely I can help and advise you and give you the right advice and guidance. And then in the future if you decide you're going with work, go away for one or two or three years or permanently, we can advise you pre departure if that makes sense based on. Definitely, I've seen that, especially in recent times, I've seen that a lot where people have gone and some going to the Middle East and some are going to Australia, New Zealand, some to America, there's lots of medics moving abroad and obviously publicized at the moment. The pay issues are probably impacting that to some extent. Um But it's probably also lifestyle, there's a number of reasons. Um So it's not, it's not, that's, I can't really do much about the factors that are affecting people's work life issues in terms of the NHS. But what I can do is hopefully give them some confidence that, yeah, the pension they're putting away the money into is going to be for their benefit. They've got a sound plan about their family protection. If they've got family, they want to move home, that's all gonna happen for them. If that's, you know, an objective and if they want to start investing some money, you know, if you're gonna move abroad, you might want to have a lump of money to take with you to the country and say if it's five years, we, we'd always invest in a stock market based plan for a minimum of five years. So if it's below five years, then I'd talk you through your options for cash alternatives. Um Yeah, the same. So, yeah, I don't think there's been any questions on the chat. So, um, but yeah, if you're happy with that, then maybe we'll, we'll close.