Preparing Physicians for Financial Emergencies

Posted on June 2, 2010 by Dr. David Edward Marcinko MBA MEd CMP™

Join Our Mailing List

Domestic Personal Savings Rate Increasing?

By Somnath Basu PhD, MBA [www.clunet.edu/cif]

[Director California Institute of Finance]

There is a heartening change that we are observing today, an event that is truly national in character. At the bottom of the financial abyss we single-handedly turned around our personal savings for the first time in 12 years.  The chart (Department of Commerce publications data) below expresses this turnaround emphatically.

Graph: Personal Savings Rate

It is the timing of this turnaround that is so heartening. The realization that this crisis may truly be worse than any other enabled us as a nation to halt this decline. We have our emergency “nest eggs’ rebuilt again. Amazing still is that this feat was achieved with a determined effort to curtail our consumption levels to ensure that our emergency funds were rebuilt. Again, a similar chart expresses this aspect much better.

Graph: Change in Consumption

What next then?  With our emergency nest eggs rebuilt, we must now ponder the question as to continue to increase our savings or not. For lay and senior physicians, the object would be to ensure they did not outlive their funds. For those medical professionals, and the rest of us, between the ages of 45-65 in general, retirement must loom somewhere, and retirement is sweet. Similarly, for those between ages 25 to 45, thoughts would turn towards families, home purchase and children’s education; all worthwhile savings objectives.

Assessment

Thus, the central question is whether we should increase our current consumption or postpone consumption to attain our future objectives. Only time will tell whether we continue the trend of increasing savings and moderating consumption or whether we go back to drawing down on our savings to increase current consumption.

Conclusion

And so, your thoughts and comments on this ME-P are appreciated. What is your propensity to save or consume? Is it more or less for medical professionals? Feel free to review our top-left column, and top-right sidebar materials, links, URLs and related websites, too. Then, be sure to subscribe. It is fast, free and secure.

 

Editor’s Note: Somnath Basu PhD is program director of the California Institute of Finance in the School of Business at California Lutheran University where he’s also a professor of finance. He can be reached at (805) 493 3980 or basu@callutheran.edu. See the agebander at work at www.agebander.com

Speaker: If you need a moderator or speaker for an upcoming event, Dr. David E. Marcinko; MBA – Publisher-in-Chief of the Medical Executive-Post – is available for seminar or speaking engagements. Contact: MarcinkoAdvisors@msn.com

OUR OTHER PRINT BOOKS AND RELATED INFORMATION SOURCES:

Product Details  Product Details

Filed under: Financial Planning, Funding Basics, Investing, Op-Editorials | Tagged: , , , , , , , | 3 Comments »