Wealthy and retired. Two simple words. What do they mean to you? How far are you from achieving them? How do they relate to each other?The words may convey different meanings to different people. As an adjective, wealthy is the state of having wealth. And wealth, in the financial sense, provides the life conditions that enable you to make your own choices, to go where you want, to do as you choose when you choose. Being wealthy is about liberty.Possessing wealth could translate into having the ability to take vacations, to buying new cars and homes or building that lifestyle you’ve always imagined.Retirement is the cessation, reduction or elimination of the requirement to work. Now comes the tie-in, the melding of the two: retiring wealthy from your chiropractic practice. How do you do it?What will it take?What will it look like?Retiring wealthy involves first defining what it means to you and how you expect to achieve it. What are you willing to do? What’s the plan?
Let’s first examine your objective: are you looking to build a retirement or a rainy-day fund? You must know your target…
Although the marketplace is abuzz with prospectors determined to help you spend your retirement wealth, few smart advisors are proffering their services in how to generate and keep it.
However, the best advice for the aspiring chiropractor looking to build wealth and create a secure retirement: Invest in yourself. That may sound simplistic or even understated. But it rings profound.
Different Investment Strategies
Investing in yourself may take several forms depending on your abilities, talents and inclinations. For chiropractors, developing greater communications skills (individual or group), better patient care, improved administration, enhanced sales or other profession-related skill is one form of personal investment.Building wealth and establishing a solid retirement depend on your current competency levels and the progressive steps you take to fortify your achievements. After all, nothing ultimately remains stable – you’re either building a better future now by investing in yourself or letting your future crumble through inaction.The second step: Invest in your practice. Your greatest asset is obviously your stock and trade – chiropractic. You devoted your life to it, you laid your reputation upon it, you had the foresight to realize chiropractic would occupy the largest and most significant portion of your life.
So, why do so many chiropractors like yourself step outside the box and put their money in other investments? Good financial expert rightly say diversifying is sound investment advice. But few chiropractors take the time to consider that sometimes their own practice is the best repository of their money. In short, investing in your practice is smart wealth building. Sure. You may diversify some of your money. But the best place for your extra cash is in your own business.Building your business can take three forms. You may increase prices, find ways to increase volume or increase the number of products and services. Or you could do a combination of the three at different times.Another powerful step in building wealth is by accumulating surplus cash. That, obviously, is common knowledge. So, what’s the problem? It’s easier said than done. First, you must generate a significant income, which dovetails into our previous advice.Accumulating a surplus requires building and maintaining a thriving practice. Once that is established, it’s time to build the surplus. Sounds easy, right? It is if you make “surplus” a monthly bill you must pay.Here’s how: Set up a separate account that you don’t have immediate or easy access to and regularly send “bills” to that account. Before you know it, you have surplus cash, maybe enough to invest further and tangibly into your practice.Remember, building wealth is about investing, investing, investing.
What Type of Practice is Best?
The key measure of effective wealth building as a chiropractor goes to the sellable value of the practice. Most personality-driven practices have little value once the owner leaves. Practices generally see for comparatively little since buyers are looking for up-and-ready establishment.
