Broad Mistakes made by doctors
It is not as though the common man does not make financial mistakes, they do..but doctor mistakes are worse. Let me enumerate some of them:
- Investing in direct equities without any professional help.
- Investing in direct equities with professional help!! Well the kind of professionals who helped them were terrible.
- Not naming the firm but a few Brokerage houses have ripped off many doctors – did they give word of mouth reference?
- Signing up for PMS and losing almost 100% of capital
- Pretending that if the PMS boy at the other end of the phone did not listen to the Doctor..or they would have been Rich
- Pretending to understand equity markets even though the evidence is staring them at their face
- Buying ULIPs – with nice big round sums as premium
- Buying ULIP sold to them as single premium, but what turned out to be regular premium
- Not accepting that ULIP is worth surrendering even if it is in a loss – throwing good money after bad
- Not buying medical insurance
- Letting medical insurance lapse
- Buying too much endowment insurance and now arguing..at least it is an investment
- Not understanding term insurance – almost refusing to understand
- Letting money sleep in bank accounts
- Thinking mutual fund means equity investments
- Refusing to allow new thoughts into their minds
- Not buying Disability insurance
- Not buying ENOUGH Malpractice insurance
- Taking a huge home loan to buy an unnecessarily big home
- Not buying a clinic
- Putting all investible surplus in Real Estate – over and above an unaffordable own residential house
- Using a credit card – and of course – not paying off in full every month
- Buying a Time Share Holiday Resort – you know which company, right?
- Trading options (this son of a doc lost Rs. 4 crores – a doc himself)
- Not saving anything for retirement
- Not taking care of OWN health – and finding that very expensive in terms of downtime and medical costs
- Basing life style on salesman’s talk: “Sir you are a doctor and you deserve it”. You can sell him the moon with this statement.
Will do a practice management mistakes…separately!!
MRHDK2012
I have come across doctors taking foreign vacations every 6-12 months. Not sure if they have such high incomes. May be they are blowing away large part of their incomes.
Many of the are affected by common lifestyle mistake like buying expensive cars and changing them often.
cashCowOfNation
@ MRHDK2012
Most doctors do not take foreign vacations – they go to all expenses paid Medical Conferences in exotic locations – the expenses being paid for by the Pharma companies.
MRHDK2012
Conferences are different. I meant self-paid family vacations.
Dr. Basudev Tewari
Perfect, Subra Sir, you have hit the bull’s eye. Adding another point… Doctors earn a lot and always focus on earning more. But they are very reluctant in understanding the principles of investment and proper money management. Their ego is their greatest enemy.